Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

¶¶ Thank you.

Good morning. It is 9.30, and I'm going to officially call the Tuesday, August 25th, meeting of the Board of County Commissioners in Seminole County to order. If you would, I would like to invite Pastor Bob Melhorn from the Integrity Church up, and he is going to do our invocation as well as lead us in the pledge. Thank you, Pastor.

Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to see you. Let's pray. Holy One, you are the creator of all things. And we never cease to marvel that we dwell in a land where we can elect our leaders to shape the future of our community. We would ask that, though sometimes we get frustrated with the workings of democracy, with the controversies, with the conflict, help us to remember how fortunate, how blessed we are, how we are the envy of the world. You are a God of abundance, but it seems to us that in our commission meetings, month after month, the issues are always financial. It seems that the costs of everything are continually rising and resources are limited. And we ask our leaders to negotiate a narrow path between providing services and restricting spending. And all this with an amendment looming on the ballot in November. And so we would pray for wisdom for our leaders. And we would ask you would remind us that you are indeed a generous God. a God of provision, and you have never failed us. I ask your blessing upon our county commissioners, our county manager, our county attorney, all who are in the employ of Seminole County, and all who make Seminole County their home. All this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pastor, thank you for being here this morning. I want to also express my appreciation for you, including our team, in your prayer. They are the ones that deliver for our citizens every day. We just get to come here and make executive decisions. They do the hard work. So thank you for that. All right, we are going to move to awards, presentations, and proclamations. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we have one of the most athletic counties in And I think in the country. So there's quite a few of them this morning. But we are going to start with proclaiming the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month in Seminole County. And this will be read by Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I will move the proclamation of Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month. Whereas Seminole County is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all residents and visitors of Seminole County, and whereas more than 48 million Americans have experienced substance abuse disorders in the past year, And whereas substance use disorders affect individuals of every age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and community, impacting not only those living with the disease, but also their families, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, And whereas recovery is strengthened through compassion, understanding, community support, and the elimination of stigma, empowering individuals to seek help and thrive in recovery. And whereas prevention, treatment, recovery support, services, and harm reduction strategies, including access to now Oxon, save lives and provide pathways to hope, healing, and long-term recovery. And whereas Seminole County is committed to increasing community awareness of the dangers of illegal substance use, And whereas Seminole County Community Health Division works collaboratively with health care providers, first responders, behavioral health professionals, recovery organizations, schools, faith-based organizations, community partners, and individuals with lived experiences to promote recovery and connect residents with vital resources. And, whereas National Recovery Month provides an opportunity to celebrate the resilience and achievements of individuals in recovery, honor the dedicated professionals, peers, families, and volunteers who support them, and reaffirm our commitment to ensure that recovery is possible for everyone. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby proclaims the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month in Seminole County, Florida, and encourages all residents to recognize the importance of prevention, treatment, recovery support services, and community partnerships while working together to reduce the stigma and ensure that every individual has the opportunity to pursue hope, healing,

and recovery adopted on august 25th 2026. second we have a motion in three seconds is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor passes unanimously thank you all right and i think we have mr margolis here to accept the proclamation If you'd like to come up and say a few words, we would be happy to have you. We'll do all of our pictures at the end, so we're not coming and going from the dais, but we would love to hear from you. Thank you for the work you do in our community.

Hello, everyone. I appreciate very much the support that Seminole County Board of Commissioners and the other organizations within Seminole County have given Recovery Connections over the past few years to help us with the job of... helping individuals with recovery support concerns and issues. And I think it's been something that over time has been successful with our partners from the Sheriff's Department, from AdventHealth, and the other organizations that we do business with. So thank you very much for the proclamation and for the ongoing support. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

All right, the next proclamation is proclaiming September 11th, 2026 as Patriot Day in Seminole County, and this will be read by Commissioner Lockhart.

Commissioners, I move the following proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming September 11th, 2026 as Patriot Day in Seminole County. Whereas the citizens of Seminole County join communities throughout our nation in solemnly observing Patriot Day and commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11th, 2001, honoring the lives lost and the heroes who answered the call to serve. And whereas, the events of September 11, 2001, forever changed our nation and remain a lasting reminder of the courage, compassion, and resilience demonstrated in the face of tragedy. And whereas, on that tragic day, firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, military members, and civilians demonstrated extraordinary courage and selflessness, placing the safety of others before their own. And whereas, we honor the more than 400 first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice, as well as the countless responders, volunteers, and citizens who risked their lives to help others. And whereas, the legacy of September 11th continues to be felt by survivors, first responders, military personnel, families, and communities across our nation whose sacrifices remain an enduring part of our history. And whereas Patriot Day provides an opportunity to remember those who lost their lives, honor the sacrifices of their families, and express our gratitude to those who protect and serve our communities each day. And whereas the 25th anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect upon the enduring values of freedom, service, unity, and resilience that strengthen our nation and our community. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby recognizes September 11th, 2026 as Patriot Day in Seminole County, Florida. Be it further proclaimed that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners encourages all residents to pause on September 11th in remembrance of those who were lost, honor those who served and sacrificed, and reaffirm the importance of coming together in times of adversity. Adopted this 25th day of August, 2026. Second.

We have a motion and four seconds. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. And I think we have Chief Kinley. Chief Kinley, we welcome you to the podium to say a few words.

Matt Kinley, for the record, Fire Chief, Selma County Fire Department. Thank you for this recognition today as we continue to honor the 2,977 people who lost their lives that day, along specifically with the 343 firefighters, all in public safety. ran towards that danger as others were running away to provide every bit of help that they could. Along with that, to continue to recognize our public safety personnel in uniform that continue to this day in this community to respond to people's worst moment in their lives and are often the first ones that they talk to, the first ones that they see. And perfect form of government. You dial 911, we respond, we solve your problem, and then we leave you alone. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for reminding us of those numbers. All right, well, the next thing we have on the agenda is certainly a celebration worth celebrating. It is our student-athlete resolutions. recognizing our athletic, I shouldn't say our, your athletic accomplishments. Let's be clear about that. Your athletic accomplishments and those of your coaches. The first one is Hagerty High School softball team, and this will be read by Commissioner Dilary.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A moment ago you said, and you're right when you said this, how we're extremely proud of our student athletes and that they're recognized nationally, and they are. And I will tell you, it used to be where the three states you always had to worry about performing in was California, Texas, and Florida. Those are the three big states because of the weather and the size of them. Well, now it's Seminole County. And I will tell you, to say that we are proud of you all in all the different schools is, we can't echo it enough. I saw these young ladies play last year when they came running up. The weather was a factor. The late delay was a factor. And then it came back the following year, this year, to win it all. And to say that we are proud doesn't really go far enough. You all are true leaders, not just your sport, but in your school and in the community. So with that, Madam Chair, it is my distinct honor to read this resolution. Resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Hagerty High School softball team as state champions. Whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County recognizes the importance of girls athletics in developing leadership, confidence, teamwork, perseverance, while celebrating the accomplishments of these student athletes who represent their school and community with pride and distinction. It was as seminal as where Hagerty High School Husky softball team captured the Florida High School Athletic Association Class A7 state championship in 2026, demonstrating exceptional athletic ability, competitive excellence, commitment to achieving the highest standard of success. And we're finishing as the 2025 Florida State AA Class 7A State Championship runner-up. Huskies returned in 2026 with determination and resilience, overcoming the disappointment of falling short the previous season. and completing their championship journey with a 2-0 victory over Weston High School at Boomba Soldier's Creek Park in Longwood, Florida, located in Seminole County. And whereas the Huskies' championship performance was highlighted by an outstanding pitching, defense, teamwork, excellence, execution, reflecting the preparation and dedication and commitment to displaying throughout the season by student athletes and coaching staff. And whereas under the leadership and guidance of head coach Tom Kerling and Hagerty High School softball program has established a culture of excellence, built on discipline, accountability, sportsmanship, and continued development of student athletes on both on and off the field. and was recent retired athletic director, Jay Getty, helped establish a tradition of excellence within Hagerty High School athletics. And the athletic director, Jacob Calhoun, now continues the legacy by supporting student athletes in the athletic program for striving success in both on and off the field. and whereas Hagerty High School Huskies softball team achieved both great pride to Hagerty High School and Seminole County by serving as an inspiration to the young athletes and reinforcing the value of perseverance, teamwork, dedication, and commitment to excellence, now therefore be resolved by the Board of County Commission of Seminole County that the Board recognizes the commitment that Hagerty High School Husky softball team for winning the 2026 Florida State AA Class 7A State Softball State Championship extends a sincere congratulations to the athletics, athletes, coaches, and families, administration, and supporters whose dedication and hard work continues to be an outstanding achievement. Adopted this 25th day of August 2026. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. And if the athletes would sit down and let the coaches be recognized for a second, that would be awesome. You're welcome, you're welcome. Congratulations, ladies and coaches. All right, the next one will be read by Commissioner Constantine, the Lake Howell High School Boys Volleyball Team.

As Commissioner Delori said, this is becoming an every meeting event. And today, because we wouldn't want to go all the way through the holidays, we have four teams. And it's just amazing that Seminole County just continues to kick butt time and time again. I would move the resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Lake Howe High School boys volleyball team as state champions. Whereas Seminole County proudly recognizes the outstanding achievements of the student athletes and the positive representation they bring to the community through excellence and competition. And whereas Lake Howe High School Silverhawks boys volleyball team achieved an historic milestone by winning the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 2A State Boys Volleyball Championship in 2026, marking back-to-back state championships. And whereas the Silverhawks finished the season with a 17-game winning streak going 27-5 overall, defeating Archbishop McCarthy three sets to one in the semifinals, the Silverhawks secured their championship in a thrilling contest against top seed Bellin Jesuit, sweeping all three sets to 27-25, 26-24, 31-29. And whereas the Lake Howell boys volleyball team overcame adversity and demonstrated resilience, determination, and composure under pressure, exemplifying the highest ideals of sportsmanship and competitive experience. And whereas the team's success reflects the leadership of head coach Scott Lehman, whose commitment to excellence, character, and development and community pride has played a pivotal role in the program's historic achievement. And whereas the championship reflects the dedication of the coaching staff, the student athletes, the families, school administrators and supporters whose collective effort contributed to the remarkable success. And whereas the achievement has brought significant recognition to Seminole County and serves as an inspiration to youth throughout the community to pursue excellence both on and off the court. Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, do hereby congratulate the Lake Howe High School boys volleyball team for winning the 2026 Florida High School Athletic Association Class 2A State Championship and extends its sincere congratulations to the players, coaches, families, and supporters for the historic accomplishment adopted this 25th day, August 2026. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none opposed, it passes unanimously. Congratulations. Congratulations, gentlemen, if you would be seated. And coach, just stand for a minute and accept your recognition. Congratulations, gentlemen. All right, and the next item that we'll be looking at is the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team. And this will be read by myself, Commissioner, who happens to be a Seminole mom.

Go Knolls.

Go Knolls. I read the following resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Seminole High School girls water polo team as state champions, whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County recognizes the importance of girls athletics in fostering leadership, confidence, teamwork, perseverance, and character while celebrating the accomplishments of student athletes who represent their schools and community with pride and distinction. And whereas the Seminole High School girls water polo team captured the 2026 Florida High School Athletic Association Class 1A State Championship, completing, hold for it, an undefeated 31-0 season and further establishing itself as one of Florida's premier high school water polo programs. And whereas the Seminole High School girls water polo team secured the state title with an 8-4 victory over West Orange High School on April 25, 2026 at Bellin Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami, Florida, earning its second state championship in three years, following an undefeated championship season in 2024, while also advancing its fourth consecutive FHSAA State Final Four. And whereas, under the leadership and guidance of Head Coach Ryan Akerson, who was named the 2026 FHSAA State Coach of the Year, the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Program has built a championship culture centered on excellence, accountability, perseverance, and the continued development of student athletics, both in competition and in the classroom. And whereas Vivian Swain, who was named the 2026 FHSAA State Player of the Year, exemplified the outstanding talent, leadership, and dedication that have become hallmarks of the Seminole High School girls water polo program. And whereas the Seminole High School girls water polo team's historic accomplishments have brought tremendous pride to Seminole High School, and Seminole County, inspiring future generations of student athletes while reinforcing the values of hard work, resilience, teamwork, and commitment to excellence. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, that the Board hereby recognizes and commends the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team for winning the 2026 FHSAA Class 1A State Championship and extends its sincere appreciation and congratulations to the student athletes, coaches, families, administrators, and supporters whose dedication and hard work contributed to this outstanding achievement. Adopted this 25th day of August 2026. Second. Motion and many seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Please stand. Congratulations, lady and coach, if you would stay standing just for a minute. I did this a little bit differently than the others. I'll round up with this. I will tell you that one of the things that we look for in the business environment when we are recruiting people to come into organizations is athletics and their past. One of the ones I personally look for is anything related to being in a pool. It requires you to get up at the crack of dawn, probably be there late at night. They're all nodding and laughing. It requires your parents to have done the same, and it requires a perseverance that's unlike a lot of other sports. And that's not to say that we don't also look for band members, so just remember that. You'll be competing with them for jobs as well. I would say this. If you would, audience, please join me in a standing ovation for our student athletes in Seminole County. All right. Did I forget one? You have one more team. Oh, my goodness. We have too many teams winning state championships. We have too many teams. We have teams. Save the best for last, right? Save the best for last. Go Bears. So I will hand it to the coach who's saying, hey, well, hold up, hold up. All right, and we have the Winter Springs High School softball team to be read by Commissioner Zimbauer, who shall never be forgotten.

Well, we tend to leave the best for last. To echo my fellow commissioners, this is just another sign of what makes Seminole County such a great place to live, work, and play. We've now worked our way completely through the county, recognizing our youth sports around this area, in Seminole County. It's not the first time. We've had teams from Alamont Springs in here, Winter Springs before, many other places in the community, Lake Mary a couple times. But it just goes to show the commitment that our leaders have taken, our coaches that give their time to help support these children, and of course the families that make the ultimate sacrifice for these children to be able to do what they can do. builds character, and they are the future leaders of our community. So my hat's off to them. With great pleasure, I have this resolution of Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognize the 2026 Winter Springs High School softball team as state champions. Whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County recognizes the impact of girls' athletics in building confidence, leadership, teamwork, and character while honoring the dedication and achievements of student-athletes who bring recognition to pride to their schools and community. And whereas the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team captured the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 5A state championship in 2026, earning back-to-back state championships and continuing a tradition of excellence within one of Seminole County's premier softball programs. And whereas, the Bears completed their championship season with a dominant 6-0 victory over Knightsville High School at Boombas Soldiers Creek Park in Longwood, Florida. Showcasing outstanding pitching, defense teamwork, and determination throughout the state tournament. And whereas, the Winter Springs High School softball program's continued success reflects the dedication, preparation, and commitment of its student athletes, coaches, families, and school community. who have worked together to achieve excellence at the highest level of competition. And whereas, under the leadership and guidance of head coach Farrah Gordon, the Winter Springs softball program has developed a championship culture centered on accountability, perseverance, sportsmanship, and the growth of student athletes both on and off the field. Whereas Athletic Director Scott Gomrad provided leadership and support that have helped foster a culture of achievement and success within Winter Springs High School athletics, and whereas the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team's historic accomplishment has brought tremendous pride to Winter Springs High School and Seminole County, serving as an inspiration to future generations of athletes, exemplifying the values of dedication, teamwork, and determination. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, that the Board hereby recognize and commends the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team for winning the 2026 FHSAA Class 5A Softball State Championship and extends a sincere congratulations to the student-athletes, coaches, families, administration, and supporters whose dedication and hard work contributed to this outstanding achievement adopted this 25th day, August 2026. Second.

We have a motion and a lot of seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. If you would please stand and be recognized. Congratulations, congratulations. And coaches, just give us a minute to be recognized on your behalf.

Thank you.

I must say the principal regrets she could not be present today. She intended to be here. Sorry.

May I add something to the team's accolades? Over the course of seven playoff games, they set a national record scoring 73 runs and giving up zero for the entire playoff run. These young ladies and coaches want to congratulate them. Thank you again.

All right. That is remarkable. All right, commissioners, if you would join me on the floor for pictures, unless there's anybody else that's here that's at home.

Thank you.

Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . ¶¶ Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you.

And the hush came over the room. And I'll just say, this has nothing to do with the next presenter, but the meeting's going downhill from there. Just so you know. And with that, we'll bring up Mr. McIntyre to talk about economics. This is the county investment advisor report.

Thank you.

I feel the same way. I watch all this. 83 runs and no runs scored against are just remarkable. So props to all of your athletes. I'm over 60, so I've almost got eyesight challenges here. It helps a little bit. So we're not on the verge of a Fed meeting. We've got three weeks before. There is a Jackson Hole Fed symposium on Friday, and I think the market's going to react to that because we're wondering about Fed credibility at this point. Because inflation is still high, and the Fed has... decided that they're going to target inflation, but they haven't done anything yet. So we're listening to the words. And in the meantime, oil and gas prices are creeping higher. You know why that is. The market is not real thrilled with that. There are some signs emerging of labor market weakness. The labor market's kind of been all over the place. My personal opinion is that the labor market is not strong. And I think a lot of that is changes that are happening involving technology. We believe the Fed is going to be on hold at least until December. My expectation is that the Fed is not going to raise rates. The market expects the Fed will raise rates. I think that, and I've said it before, the new Fed chair was hired with the predisposition to cut rates, so the idea of hurting the economy deliberately by raising rates, which is what the Fed does. They try to... in essence, crippled demand. So in doing so, they're lower prices. It's not just a question of raising rates and suddenly inflation moves lower. Demand has to move lower, too. Then, of course, if you guys have been following the newspapers, we just hit $40 trillion very quickly in terms of the national debt. And what that means is that debt service costs right now are above $1 trillion a year. They're expected to be above $2 trillion by 2036, so within 10 years. And I think that that theme is going to continue to show up in the newspapers. I think that the media is aware of it, and the market's aware of it too. So long-term rates are higher than they've been in a long time. The 30-year is as high as it's been in three decades. Again, bad news. Let's talk about softball, volleyball, water volleyball, all good. Economy, not so much. This is just a quick look at GDP. That red line is quarter over quarter annualized. That's what shows up. The thing really to point out is that Last quarter, second quarter, 1.5% economic growth. A lot of that had to do with a negative drag from trade and a negative drag from inventories, both of which I think are going to be actually... go the other way in the third quarter. I think third quarter growth is going to appear fairly strong for what that's worth. This is, as I was talking about before, these are non-farm payrolls. Last three months, you can actually see the downward trend pretty significantly. And the month of July was a negative payroll growth month. This is CPI. This is the consumer price index. This is headline inflation. You can see that it actually has moved lower over the past two months. A lot of that has to do with lower gas prices, lower energy prices in general. We know that that's actually reversed itself in August. We can see it at the gas pump. So that was just sort of a head fake. The Fed knows it. This is the two-year Treasury note yield going back one year. That line at the bottom is the day that the war started, so you can see the impact of energy prices on bond yields. This is the latest Bloomberg survey. I know it's a little bit difficult to see. I'll point out some of the highlights. These are 85 economists that get to weigh in every month. They're U.S. economists. They're some of the best and the brightest. Although the market expects the Fed is going to raise rates, the economists do not. They expect the Fed is going to be on hold. You can see that with currently the Overnight rate target by the Fed is 350 to 375. So this is the upper band staying at 375 until next year. And then these economists believe the next move will be a rate cut. I do as well. I believe the economy is not as strong as would otherwise indicate. You know the drill here. The top tier there are the overnight liquidity options, and right now the lion's share of the Seminole County's monies is in Florida Prime. That is managed by Federated. AAA M-rated, good place to be. U.S. Treasury yields have actually come down a little bit since the last time we were here. So you were able to buy your purchases at some of the higher yields. I don't know if that's – I can't say that's anything other than fortunate. But looking at the recent transactions, there was a one-year term done at 430. There were two FHLB callable trades done at 440 and 460. I expect even though those go out to two-year and three-year, I expect they'll be called early. But as we've discussed, I believe that putting on a... 440 and a 460 relative to 375 even for six months is going to make sense. So every little nickel we can pick up on the tracks contributes to income. One of the overlying themes when we're investing is that there's a significant amount of income that comes into your coffers. During the Great Recession, rates were at zero. For two years during the pandemic, rates were at zero. Now rates are generally... between 3.5% and 4.5%, depending on where you're investing. And that generates a lot of interest income. And what we're trying to do here is safely hold on to as much of that as we can for as long as we can. Upcoming maturities. I've spoken to the clerk's office. That maturity that comes... On Monday, it's needed. So we're going to go ahead and let that fall into Florida Prime. There will be some $35 million actually matures at the end of September. The needs for that are significantly less. I think we're going to have the opportunity to invest that when we talk at the next meeting. So in essence, what I'm telling you is that we need the liquidity. We invested last time. Those rates were good. They've added to the overall yield. Portfolio yield has generally been moving higher, so we went from a 395 to 396. With these moves, it'll settle in August 397. Most of that gets weighed down by what's fully liquid, which is well below 4%, but we need that liquidity. And there's the benchmark. Seminole County has been doing well, especially given the fact that it's a safe portfolio. But I'm going to come back up here. I'm going to ask for your motion.

Commissioner Zimbali.

I'll move to implement the recommendations of our financial advisor based on the report he submitted to us today. And I recommend the clerk implement said board recommendations. Second.

Move the first and the second. Any discussion, commissioners? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Thank you, Scott, for being here.

Thank you all.

We are going to take a break for 10.15. We'll be back at 10.30. I think we have some setup to do with regard to the second portion of the meeting. So we'll see you back at 10.30.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.

A bit early, so if you would take your seats, that would be fabulous. All right, I'll call the meeting back to order. Thank you all for being patient with us while we got set up. We're ready to move on to the consent agenda. I'll look for additions, deletions, or modifications. County Manager?

Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Just one addition to the agenda that was sent to your offices and published on Friday is 19A. It's mitigation credits that we have to buy for Rosenwald. So that's the only addition. So staff recommends approval of the county manager's consent agenda.

Commissioners?

I have nothing.

I would actually like to pull item 20 for discussion. And that's the only item. So with that, I'll look for public comment. So I'll go to county attorney to read the rules of public comment.

Thank you, Chairman. Good morning. Florida law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the Board of County Commissioners except when the Board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the Sunshine Law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at her sole discretion when appropriate. Public comments on quasi-judicial or other public hearing items will occur during the board's consideration of those items this afternoon. Public comments on pending procurement matters or on non-agenda items shall not be permitted at this time. Members of the public desiring to make public comment must fill out a speaker form and present the form to staff. Forms are available in the lobby. Chairman.

Thank you very much. And I have four forms that are being passed down the dais. All are in support of item eight and nine. All right, Dominique, if you would call the first speaker. First speaker is Charlene Santos on item six. Ms. Santos, you'll have three minutes.

Name and address for the record. Good morning. My name is Charlene, C-H-A-R-L-I-N-E, last name Santos, S-A-N-T-O-S. I live at 713 Holbrook Circle, Lake Mary, Florida. I'm here to speak on agenda item number six, the request to authorize a sheriff's office to submit an application to the U.S. Department of Justice for the fiscal year 2026 Bridging Immigration-Related Deficits Experience Nationwide Program, round two, and this is to authorize a sheriff to execute future documents related to that grant. While I am fully support of the Sheriff's Office and I support bringing federal dollars back to Seminole County when those dollars benefit our residents, I also believe that it's important that we fully understand the conditions attached to those dollars. The document attached to today's agenda do not provide the details of the application, of the grant application. What we have been given is essentially a certification document. And before this is approved, residents deserve some basic answers. First, how much money is Seminole County applying for? And what will the grant pay for? This federal program supports several activities, personnel, operations, equipment, and technology, as well as facilities, including the construction, expansion, and modernization of temporary detention facilities. Secondly, what additional responsibilities or commitments will our Sheriff's Office take on by accepting the grant? How could those responsibilities affect our neighborhoods, our communities, and the trust residents have in local law enforcement? And finally, could accepting the grant create future costs for Seminole County taxpayers once the federal funds end, especially at a time when residents are feeling squeezed? These are reasonable questions. I'm not suggesting that we turn down the federal funding. I am asking that we understand the full agreement before we authorize it. Transparency starts by laying out the basics and also the details. Before we sign, residents deserve to know exactly what we're signing up for. Thanks. Thank you.

Next speaker. Next is Emery Green Jr. on item nine. Mr. Green, name and address for the record, please and thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners, chairman, county manager. I'm here to speak in support of visionary planning, strong advocacy, and most importantly, action. This is a simple phrase I believe applies to the proposed indoor events complex along Lake Mary Boulevard. Advocacy without action is just a dream. Dreaming is necessary because we must believe in what our community can become. But dreams only create impact when leaders are willing to turn vision into action. We have the perfect example right here in Sanford. The Sanford River Walk was not an overnight success. Its vision was first laid out in the 1980s by then Mayor Betty Smith. Decades later, after planning advocacy partnerships and strategic investment, that vision became a five-mile reality. The completed Riverwalk represented approximately $43 million in investment. And what did that investment create? It became a destination that strengthened connections and expanded recreational opportunities. The Sanford Riverwalk is a lasting asset that reflects the county's motto, Florida's Natural Choice. Today, Seminole County has another opportunity to think beyond tomorrow and plan for the next generation. The proposed indoor events complex is more than a building. It's an economic development strategy designed to deliver lasting benefits. As recently reported by the Orlando Sentinel, county tourism officials that are concerned that visitor growth has become stagnant in the recent years. The proposed complex could help realize and reverse that trend and it will enable Seminole County to attract more tournaments and experiential events including sports, arts, entertainment and more. Those visitors stay in hotels, dine in restaurants, shop in local stores, experience our community supporting jobs, generating tourism-related revenue in Seminole County and throughout Central Florida. As you know, the Boomba sports complex has been ranked number one amongst America's best youth sports complexes. That tells us something important. We already have a built reputation. So now we need the indoor infrastructure to expand the opportunity beyond baseball and beyond limitations of Florida's weather. So I encourage you to think about Seminole County and the needs 20, 30, and beyond. It's important to let us ask, what will our community gain tomorrow if we have the courage to act today? Let's support the proposed indoor sports complex, invest in our future, strengthen sports tourism, create economic opportunity, and demonstrate once again that in Seminole County, visionary planning is followed by advocacy, and advocacy is followed by action. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Green. Thank you.

We have one more speaker. Yes, ma'am. Elliot Griffin on item 14. Mr. Griffin, name and address for the record.

Hi, I'm Elliot Griffin. I live at 148 Cherry Creek Circle in Winter Springs. Good morning, Commissioners and staff. I'm speaking in strong support of Agenda Item 14. It's the FDP Resilient Florida grant proposal. My family and I live on the Cross Seminole Trail. It's great. We use it every day. We've also seen how it can really flood during hurricanes. Securing this grant is a crucial step towards fixing chronic flood zones in Seminole County, including where I live in Winter Springs. I'd like to thank the County Public Works for the recent clearing out of culverts and swales along the trail. With this maintenance done, we can now see that the aging stormwater infrastructure is inadequate. The evidence is unmistakable. There's washed out berms, flooded private property, eroded trail, and the trail is really a gem, so there's multiple reasons to address this. We've also observed culverts beneath the 417, which are buried under feet of sediment from erosion. And with the 417 widening project underway, this can only worsen in the future. Any ponds that are built to code will overflow in hurricane loads, sending water into that inadequate and aged infrastructure and towards private property. To solve this, we need true interagency coordination. I urge the board to bring hydraulic and water resource engineers together from all jurisdictions and third-party firms. Several large culverts are missing from the 2025 Ardura model setup. and should be discussed along with flooding observations. I believe that when engineers sit in a room with accurate data, real solutions will come forth, including evaluating how paving over parcels like Jeddah Point Park will worsen downhill flooding. Any potential development on that parcel faces serious site constraints. Massive runoff from the 417, small and limited access through an assisted living facility and a county trailhead. an active bald eagle's nest, and a very small frontage, which is also a 417 on-ramp. Alternatively, a passive park that's built using existing facilities of the cross-seminal trails could absorb stormwater and recharge our aquifer in a sustainable manner. With regard to tax revenue, please consider that parks increase home value while flooding decreases home value. So please approve this grant application today, prioritize comprehensive modeling in the Howell Creek Basin study, and lead the regional effort to fix our stormwater infrastructure. Thank you.

Thank you, L.A. Thank you very much. Does that complete our public speakers? Yes. Thank you. Commissioners, any comments? All right, I'll look for a motion for the consent agenda. I'll move.

Madam Chair, I'll move the agreement of the Constitutional Officers Consent Agenda 5 and 6 and the County Manager's Consent Agenda 7 through 21, including 19A, but not including 20.

Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, thank you. All right, I pulled item 20 for your consideration. I have worked with the Department of Economic Development and Evoque Advertising. I believe that that contract should have a cap on the monetization. So there's a share of revenue. And I would propose that the cap be placed at $100,000. And I hope that every bit of it gets earned because that means we take in $900,000. And I would welcome a rediscussion at the point that we hit that limit so that we consider what we do in the future. This is the beginning stage of a contract like this, and it's just wise for us to put something in it to force the following discussion. Commissioner DeLaurie.

Madam Chair, I think your recommendations are spot on. I compliment you for making them. I'd like to make a motion to approve with your comments to adjust into the contract and agreement as presented with your comments.

I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. And a thank you to Evoque Advertising.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, we're getting ready for 22 in the work session. I just wanted to point out 21 was concerning the UCF Research Business Incubator Partnership Agreement. It has just been, since we're talking about accolades today, it has just been named the number one business incubator in the state by Time Magazine.

I would also, so everybody's aware, the city of Winter Springs no longer funds That incubator makes no contributions as of one year ago. And it's moving to Seminole State in Heathrow? Correct. So it's... Another asset we're losing for my district, unfortunately. But they're staying in the county. Understood. Staying in the county. Understood.

In a more centralized location.

All right. So I'm going to pull this meeting back together. We have a work session on item number 22, Amendment 3, Budget Impacts. And I see Mr. Jax standing at the ready.

Madam Chairman and Commissioners, I'll actually start off, if you will. Just a few opening comments. So, good morning, Chairman and Commissioners, and to everyone watching us. As you may recall, we met with the Board on July 14th to discuss Amendment 3 and the potential financial impacts to Seminole County government. At that meeting, the Office of Management and Budget presented our initial estimates and outlined the steps we are taking to prepare this organization should voters approve the amendment in November. Today, we move from talking about the dollars to talking about services. Before we do that, I want to put the numbers you are about to hear into perspective. Seminole County's total budget is approximately $1.3 billion. At first glance, a potential $119 million reduction may appear to be relatively a small percentage of that total. But county revenues are not interchangeable. And we have mentioned this at prior meetings, and I think, Chairman, you had mentioned the old ice cube tray and that we cannot move from fund to fund. Much of our budget consists of revenues that are legally restricted for specific purposes. Give an example like tourist development tax dollars cannot simply be redirected to repair a road or pay a firefighter. Water and sewer revenues cannot be used to operate a library. The three funds supported by property taxes have approximately $562 million in total revenues. Under the full implementation of Amendment 3, we estimate those funds would lose approximately $119 million in reoccurring revenue. That is the challenge we are preparing for. Earlier this month, I brought our leadership team together and asked each department to work through a very difficult exercise. If your available funding were permanently reduced by approximately 20%, what would that mean for the services that we provide to our residents and business owners? Today, you will hear the results of that work from our Parks and Recreation Department, Public Works, Environmental Services, and Community Services. At our next meeting on September the 15th, we will continue this discussion with our public safety agencies. I want to emphasize that you will hear today our staff recommendations and planning scenarios. No decisions have been made. If Amendment 3 is approved by voters, we will come back to this board to continue these discussions. Ultimately, decisions about reducing or eliminating county services will be a policy decision made by this board through the budget process and interactions with our citizens. There is one other point I want to make before we begin. Seminole County government is largely a service organization. We don't manufacture a product. We don't make anything. What we do is provide services, and these services are provided through and delivered by people. They are the employees who maintain our roads and our stormwater systems. They are librarians, park employees, animal service officers, firefighters, paramedics, and hundreds of other public servants who come to work every day to serve this community. That means a permanent revenue reduction of this magnitude will affect our workforce. There is simply no way around it. And the impact would extend beyond our county employees. As you will hear today, some potential reductions involve services we provide through private vendors, through the private sector, whether that is mowing county right-of-ways, maintaining facilities, providing specialized services, or purchasing materials for our operations. When we reduce those expenditures, the impact does not stop at the county's doors. Those dollars support jobs and businesses throughout Seminole County and Central Florida. So as we go through these presentations, I would encourage us to look beyond the individual budget numbers. And the question we are wanting to answer is much simpler. If Amendment 3 passes, what will be different for the people who live, work, and do business in Seminole County? That is what today's presentations are designed to show. With that, I will now turn it over to our Budget Director, Tim Jex, who will walk us through the county revenues, and then we will begin with our Parks and Recreation Department. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Jets. Thank you, Mr. County Manager and Chairman. So what's on the ballot in November is a constitutional amendment, number three, that will provide a bigger homestead exemption from the current $50,000 up to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. There will also be a cap on non-homestead properties, which would drop from 10% to 5%. When this first was brought up, there was the idea that public safety budgets would be held harmless, but they will be affected. That was not in the final bill. There was also discussion of a trust fund to offset lost revenues. That is not included. And finally, there's an idea that the lost revenue is a small percentage of the county's budget, which is a bit of a misunderstanding. So we estimate that the total impact of Amendment 3 will be $119 million in lost revenues. Seminole County has a $1.3 billion budget, so that would be about 9% of the total budget. However, within the county's budget, we have $562 million in property tax-funded revenues. Then we have $593 million in revenues that are legally restricted, $32 million in inter-fund transfers, and $108 million in fund balances, which are not true revenue inflows. County revenues are allocated into 101 different funding buckets that are used to maintain legal compliance and accountability. Property tax funds are shown on the left in green, totaling $562 million. On the right, you see restricted revenues totaling $593 million, which cannot be used on property tax funded activities. Water and sewer bills must be used to maintain the county's water and sewer system. Under solid waste, landfill fees must be used to pay for operations of the landfill and central transfer station. The infrastructure penny tax can only be used for capital infrastructure. It cannot be used to pay for sheriff deputies or firefighter salaries. Tourism funds make up a small percentage of the county's budget, and they are restricted by state statute to promote tourist activities. MSBUs are self-assessments by taxpayers for a specific purpose, like lake management. E911 funds are fees paid on your cell phone bill, which can only be used to maintain the 911 system. Health insurance revenues must be used to pay for medical claim activities. Internal service funds are for property liability and workers' comp insurance. And special revenues include grant agreements, which must be spent based on contractual requirements. The impact of Amendment 3 and the $119 million in lost revenues will come from the $562 million in property tax budgets in green. This chart shows the impact of Amendment 3 by our three property tax funds. You see in bold, the total revenue inflows of $562 million. In the general fund, the $85 million loss of revenue is about 20% of the total budget. In the fire fund, the $33 million loss of revenue is 24%. That's higher because the fire fund relies more heavily on property taxes. And then the total $119 million loss of revenues is approximately 21% of the total budget impact. This chart shows where your property tax dollars are currently allocated. 41 cents of every dollar goes towards law enforcement, corrections, and the jail. 31 cents goes to fire, EMS, dispatch, and emergency management. 11% goes to transportation, roads, bridges, traffic, drainage, and mass transit. 5% goes to recreation for parks, libraries, trails, and natural lands. three cents of every dollar goes to bcc programs including county administration planning facilities and information technology three cents goes to our constitutional officers the property appraiser clerk of court and supervisor of elections one cent goes to human services and five cents goes to unfunded mandates The outer wheel of this chart shows the budgets for your property tax-funded services. Public safety starts on the left. Sheriff law enforcement is $119 million. Jail is $74 million. Court security is $11 million. Moving up, we have fire personnel for $92 million. Fire operations is $21 million. Fire capital is $29 million. Then we have dispatch, emergency management, and animal services for $5 million each. In the center, you see the $562 million in revenues, and in red, you see the impact of Amendment 3. If unfunded mandates and public safety budgets do not share in the reductions, the lost revenues will be greater than the total budget for community services, general government services, constitutional officers, parks, transportation, and one-third of the public works operating budget. Unfunded mandates are state proclamations from the state of law requiring local governments to expend funds based on Florida statutes. Since the 1980s, there have been over 300 mandates which have shifted costs from the state to the county. When you include our jail, property taxes pay for $110 million of these unfunded mandates. This slide summarizes the challenge we're facing. Of the $562 million in property tax revenues, 72% is allocated to public safety, 5% to unfunded mandates. The impact of Amendment 3 would be 21%. That totals 98% of current revenues, leaving 2% for all other services. Amendment three goes to the voters on November 3rd. If it passes, phase one would be immediate service changes happening prior to the revenue impacts. Phase two start fiscal year 28, that's next October. We'll have the $70 million impact of the $150,000 exemption. And then finally, phase three for fiscal 29, we'll have the full $250,000 exemption implemented, which will have $119 million impact. That concludes my part of the presentation.

Thank you very much. Commissioners, any comments? I do. Commissioner Zimba.

Tim, I just want to make sure if we go to slide, I guess it's 13 or maybe it's 12, the one where just there with the pie chart. I want to make sure I'm tracking this properly. I look at the sheriff law enforcement portion of this at $119 million. That's all in. Is that correct? Yes. That's the certified transfer budget that the sheriff has requested? Right. That's his personnel, all his other expenses, all in the sheriff's ass, correct? That's correct. Okay. In comparison, if I look at the fire personnel, the fire personnel alone is $92 million. Then I bring in the fire operations at $21 million. Then I bring in the capital on fire at $29 million. That would pretty much take care of all of our fire, those three categories, correct? That's correct. OK. And we can agree that is much higher than what the sheriff's budget transfer is, correct?

Excluding the jail, the sheriff law enforcement.

The jail is our responsibility.

Yes.

We pay him to do that. Otherwise, we would have to do that. Yes. Correct? That's correct. Okay. So I'm just looking at the things we're responsible for in these categories you've broken out. My point is it would appear that our fire service costs are much higher than our law enforcement costs. Is that a fair?

They are higher, yes.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.

Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much. Just adding to, and they're not numbered, so I'm going to say to the 500, where it says 562 million property tax revenue, and then you put 72% public safety, 5% unfunded mandates, 21% taken off from Amendment 3. The one that you didn't include And that one is the 3%, or the 3 cents, the constitutional officers, which we really have no control over either. So when you take that off, we're actually, it leaves minus 1% for all other services. So that means no matter what happens, all other services potentially could go, and we'd have to cut 1% from everybody else. Thank you.

Probably a nice add to the slides at some point. That's probably a nice add to the slides at some point because that is relevant. If you go back to the pie chart, I do have a comment on that. I do think it's important to point out to our team that while we're representing this as the red is all of those areas only, clearly that's not the intention. That is just the mathematical representation to make sure that we are educating the public around the notion that this isn't a simple lift. And that certainly does the job. But I just want to put that out there on the record that this will be spread out throughout the entire operation to include all areas. There's no other way to do it if it happens. All right. We ready to move on, Commissioners?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, Chairman. With that, we'll turn it over to Mr. Durr for Parks and Recreation.

Mr. Durr?

I'm waiting for my setup, ma'am.

I thought you might be waiting for me, so I thought I'd wait in there.

So I'm going to cover budgets for each of the departments. The property tax funded budget for our parks and recreation services total $30.3 million. This includes 177 full-time positions. The 20% reduction would equate to about $6.1 million. And the $30 million makes up approximately 5% of our property tax revenues.

Thank you, Mr. Jecks. So in order to keep with the theme of trying to put all of these into simple buckets, we've tried to sprinkle that throughout this presentation. So one thing to think about within the parks and recreation umbrella, we've got four main services. The extension services, our library services, which are countywide, our recreation division, and our trails and parks, which make up the rest of our outdoor open space and the operations and maintenance of those areas, as well as a small administration office to help support those within the county. Now specifically by the numbers, we have staff based at 17 different locations throughout the county. We manage over 7,700 acres of county owned parks and natural lands. We have six regional parks staffed seven days a week. They're open for more than 80 hours during the week. Five library branches staffed seven days a week, which are open for 56 hours a week. 26 unstaffed parks and trailheads, one golf course in operation, the museum, 11 natural lands open for public use, our UF IFAS Extension Services operation, the Ed and Imogene Yarbrough Nature Center. And then we maintain 51 miles of paved trails, 85 miles of unpaved and wilderness trails, 60 different county facilities regarding the grounds maintenance, and 50 miles of county roadway medians maintained. Now those are all maintained by people, and people with different backgrounds about as varied as their different roles and responsibilities within the county. So from our frontline service, customer service folks that are staffing at our libraries and our parks, the maintenance folks that are out and doing everything from picking sunflower seeds out of our artificial turf every week to mowing the grass to folks with advanced degrees who are delivering services from everything from educational opportunities within the county to health opportunities within the county all the way down to special licenses and certifications to make sure that we're doing and maintaining our best practices across the board Some of those numbers last year alone include from our extension services offices working with over 7,200 children through our 4-H program, our library services which hosted over 1.3 million in-person visits to our library branches, and over 3.5 million visitors to our primary parks, our trails, and so forth. That includes also 355 acres of habitat restored here in Seminole County to help preserve Florida's natural choice. Again, a wide variety of services offered within this umbrella. We're also very privileged to be part of the county's economic impact strategy through our youth sports tournaments. These numbers that were generated in the last year, the 92 events that are listed all took place at county facilities, generating over $55 million worth of economic impact to our business community. As we continue to work with our tourism partners, those numbers are trending higher for 2026. So that's some of the good news. And if you wanted to hear more information about the positive impacts of our community, we've got the 2025 Community Impact Report, which is available on the county's website, that goes into great detail about our involvement and our staff's involvement with our business partners and the volunteers and the scores of other nonprofits and other groups that we work with within the community to make this all possible. Now, with the question of how do we then approach a reduction of potentially up to 20% or above in reduction of services. So heading forward, asking this question, we would look at certain things such as we would need to suspend exactly where we're at. Our recommendation, excuse me, would be to suspend our current program of the Seminole Forever Natural Lands Program. based on where we're currently at within that project. We would also reevaluate current projects that, regardless of funding, could have a positive or a negative impact on the overall general fund of the county. So that includes everything from staffing needs to maintenance needs as new projects come online. Other services that are out there that are a portion of and funded through the general fund include the operation of the law library, museum. We would have to reestablish and reevaluate how we contract our maintenance. Those aren't just switches that you can flip on and off. By the end of next fiscal year, we will have to have new contracts in place because, as you'll see, we rely a lot on the local business community to help with our maintenance needs. So those things would need to be evaluated and reduction of services and levels of service put forth in proposals to the Board of County Commissioners. we would need to look at how we address our programs across all divisions. This includes programs that are serving both the public, private, and home school students. We have that both with our libraries and with our natural lands program where we have scores of students both after school that use our libraries for those services, folks that are in home schools that use us as resources, as well as the scores of field trips that participate in our natural lands program at the Nature Center as part of their school curriculums. Again, we wouldn't want to just flip a switch at the new fiscal year. We would need to evaluate exactly how we would address those reductions in levels of service. And last but not least, we would need to freeze vacant positions under further evaluation. And that is because as we start to look at each of the four divisions within our department, we really rely on staff as our primary expenditure going forward. So as a look at extension services, Of that yearly budget, almost 70% of that goes towards our staffing of those programs. Smaller percentages are included. And I'll show you those on the screen. I won't go through every single one of them. But in this case as an example, about 12% of their budget goes towards goods and services that need to be bought in order to facilitate the delivery of those services. So these are things that we're buying out the community and so forth. And then about 18% of those, the nebulous internal charges of keeping the lights on, equipment, everything that goes into essentially operating and delivering those services throughout the community. So what could be, by addressing the largest expenditure within our extension services budget, what could be reductions of service and what are those that we would need to evaluate? Well, that includes our consumer and family sciences and that health and wellness education and school programs. It goes both towards our school students as well as adults within the community. Our youth services such as our 4-H program, our FFA and financial literacy programs that we're involved with working with school children. horticulture and sustainable agriculture programs. We assist in the farm tour on an annual basis as well as providing assistance to homeowners as they continue to look at what is possible for them through our chickens program and so forth and helping to educate what's available to them. well as our involvement with the Florida friendly yards education program that's a part of our both our water quality protection program as well as the continued education involved through our fertilizer ordinance so you see there's a lot of different services that are offered with an umbrella of the extension services division that would need to be evaluated Next is our libraries. Our libraries is the largest single division within Parks and Recreation. As you can see by this particular chart, it makes up almost two thirds of our budget are the people who maintain those libraries, maintain our collection, and provide services to our public. Only about 10% are the things that we buy on an annual basis of materials that go into our library programs. The kinds of programs and the kinds of services that are offered at our libraries that would be affected, obviously with fewer staff, we've got less availability of the building as well as the programs in which they offer. So we would need to evaluate what reducing operating hours would look like. When I talk about being open seven days a week and 56 hours, that means we're open for more than eight hours a day, which simply means during the week we're staffing the libraries in two shifts. If that's our primary resource, then we'd have to address how we would downshift, if you will, including looking at different days of operation and maybe targeting those that are maybe the less frequented. In terms of what that impact would be to the community is you just have availability of less and fewer library resources. So we have public computers that folks rely on, including our public Wi-Fi and the printing. Our staff is... every day helping people apply for jobs and apply for training online. Our meeting and educational spaces would be obviously less available, as well as just less available of physical materials throughout the community. Lastly, our librarians also put on youth and adult literacy programs. As I said, the job application assistance and other educational community programs, both with partners other education within our community as well as single offerings that we have within our libraries. Again, that would be the potential impact that we would be looking at by reducing our primary resource. This is where we start to get into parks, our recreation division. This is our six regional facilities that we talked about where our youth economic impact events are held. So we're talking about the Boomba Sports Complex, Boomba Soldiers Creek Park, Lake Sylvan Park, Redbug Lake Park, Softball Complex in San Lando. This is where you see about 55% of those resources are dedicated to our staff. With this particular division, we start to introduce some of our contract staff. So the operating services line of about almost 9%, those are contract staff members. Those are the folks that put on our tennis programs, our tennis coaches, our umpires, those that are participating in our programs. Those are contract staff. So now we're talking about almost 63% of our budget going towards people in our community to facilitate those programs. This is where we also introduce the impact potentially to our business community. The operating repair and maintenance line of about seven and a half percent, that is where we have contracts with local businesses. While our staff is busy keeping the playing courts in shape and safe, as well as mowing the grass in our sports fields, we have other contractors coming in and taking care of the common areas and some of the other more utilitarian aspects to just managing the property. So at this point, we're looking at regarding both our outsourced staff and our outsourced maintenance, over 70% of our budget is devoted to. So again, four of our facilities are open for 81 hours a week. The other two, specifically the Boomba Sports Complex, including that, is open 94 hours a week in order to facilitate both local play as well as the operation of weekend tournaments and summer tournaments. downshifting in available staffing. Obviously, as you can tell, there are multiple overlapping shifts in terms of maintenance and keeping this facility operational. So having to evaluate how we shift down or downshift the availability of these facilities. That includes the program delivery that's done at each of these facilities as well. not just tourism events, but we have recreational programs that are run at each of those facilities. So again, evaluating how those levels of service would be reduced, as well as a big cost to us is the maintenance of those facilities. We have certain levels of service that we currently apply for, both regarding our in-house staff and maintenance, as well as those that we contract with out in the business community. All of those would need to be reevaluated to look for cost savings across the board. The last division is our parks and trails division. This is where all of our unstaffed parks, our natural lands, and our trails are maintained. This equation is a little bit different. The majority of our operating budget goes straight to our business community. These are local business partners that provide maintenance services across the board. So almost 50%, 56% of this budget is to our local businesses that help us maintain these assets within the community. 28% of that goes to our personal services. So again, both to people that are employed by local businesses as well as to our staff. That is the majority of our operations in order to continue to deliver these services. So again, highlighting the overall services delivered through the Parks and Trails Division. We would need to evaluate across the board just how we operate and maintain all of our unstaffed parks. We would have to look at reduced maintenance across neighborhood parks and trailheads, our natural lands and nature center, our passive parks, our trails, our roadway medians, and county property. And last but certainly not least, we have our natural lands program that is nestled within this program that has our eco camps, They operate the nature center as well as offer other educational programs such as guided hikes and nature lessons throughout their program throughout the year. Looking forward, looking ahead, I should probably say, not looking forward, but looking ahead, what could be the ongoing service impacts as we look at potential future reductions as well? Again, the realization we're having to come back with is the Seminole Forever Natural Lands Program, which is funded entirely out of The general fund is at a viable program if the funding is not sustainable. We would be evaluating and reevaluating our delivery of our youth and community educational programs at the library. Our capital projects would primarily be based on need of existing facilities and having gone through the great recession and the unfortunate position we found ourselves in of running facilities to failure. We would be staring that in the face and it would be much more of a stark reality going forward. We would be looking at freezing our staffing levels and looking at evaluating further reductions as needed within the general fund. Obviously, we'd be looking at lowering our service levels of maintenance for our community assets. And last but not least, evaluating the viability of certain lands moving forward based on reduced funding. now i absolutely refuse to end any presentation on a down note um so in this case and i prefer to look at the uh and and just as my um my privilege of representing everyone who works on the parks and recreation department as representatives of the county the benefits of the parks department i think we've been able to establish that we really enjoy being able to serve our public and contributing greatly to the quality of life for our residents, such as the opportunity for healthy lifestyles, low-cost educational opportunities from the very youngest to the very oldest, low-cost transportation with our trail system, and protecting Florida's natural choice through our environmental program. But an integral part about being in a part, oh, let me try that again. But lastly, we really appreciate the fact that we are part of Seminole County's economic engine of keeping high property values for our residents, of direct spending through employment of our staff and our business partners in our community, and helping to drive a greater economic impact to local businesses and future prosperity of us and our residents within Seminole County. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you very much. Commissioners, any questions? Commissioner DeLaurie?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Doerr. Can you talk to us about the accreditation and what that really means to us, what that costs, and how many other entities, if in the state or surrounding areas are accredited? And then I have another follow-up question about that.

Absolutely. So our Parks and Recreation Department is nationally accredited through a board. It is all completely based on best practices within the industry. Those are modified on a period of five years, and we were first accredited back in the 2000s, just before the economic downturn, and every five years we've been re-accredited since. At that particular time, we were one of only three counties to become nationally accredited within the state of Florida. We're currently, based on my last knowledge, about one of eight counties to be nationally accredited. And we've been accredited longer than all but two of the other counties within the state. What that essentially means is that not only do we meet on a management basis and how we maintain our fiscal responsibility, as well as the responsibility we have to the natural environment in providing services, quality services to our public. This, we have to not just be able to write a wonderful memo, but also be able to prove that we are indeed walking the walk. So every five years, we are reevaluated across the board to the very latest and strictest of best practices from across the country.

Thank you, Rick. And again, this is really the first time that we've actually been involved in actually looking at your total presentation. Have you looked at outsourcing anything additional, like selling property and actually outsourcing large groups of your operation?

terms of community assets we would need to look at that in a much deeper basis of course we are blessed to have a number of community assets spread from the most developed areas in the county to the most rural parts of the county all of those we would evaluate and bring those back for future consideration any new assets or new acquisitions is why I said obviously all of those would need to be reevaluated as well in terms of our ability to outsource additional staffing at this point. Obviously, we would look at that deeper. A number of that had already been done through the economic downturn. The large budget that you saw within one of our divisions alone, part of that was as a result of the economic downturn and our ability to outsource a lot of sort of the regular maintenance, the blow and go, if you will, of cutting grass and making sure that things are in working order. The reality of our staffing levels at this particular time, however, for our county staff is we don't have a lot of redundant staffing. Meaning that at any of our facilities, if we have one person call out sick while somebody else is on vacation, I'll look at more of a dynamic staffing model. We're now pulling staff from other facilities to help cover. We've just been in the mode of doing so. There's nothing wrong with that. It really drives the best value to the county as well. It's just that we're thin to begin with. So outsourcing any of those other things, we'd be looking for opportunities. It's just the realities of there's not a lot of different ways to spend that dollar. Thank you. Any more questions, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Commissioner Constantine. I think you had your hand up.

Thank you very much. Discounting, which we cannot, the value to our local businesses that you and all the other programs that we're going to talk to today benefit. So you think we're tightening our belts to look at all the businesses. Tim, by your own numbers, this 20% reduction that you're talking about has to assume that everything in general revenue through ad valorem will have to be reduced 20% also, which means public safety and fire department would have to be reduced by 20% if my numbers are correct or your numbers are correct. Am I correct on that? That's correct. So I want to bring out the fact that we're only looking at 20% reduction here because we're also talking about if we do this, if Amendment 3 passes, that we're talking about 20% across the board to all ad valorem. So if we don't do that, which means if we don't reduce the sheriff's budget, the fire department's budget, the unfunded mandates budget, and the constitutional officer's budget by 20% also, all these programs are at zero. Am I wrong? You're correct. If everyone is in share in the reduction. So us talking about this.

I would add, I think that is wrong. I think it's a negative number.

Yeah, okay. A third of the budget on public works in order to get to zero. No, you're right. It's 1%, 19 million, something like that. I agree, but I was just trying to. Right.

We can't work our way out of this by cutting everybody to zero. Now we're talking about 21%. Correct. Correct.

So the fact of the matter is we're doing an exercise here that really assumes that we can cut public safety and fire. And that needs to be included in the discussion because I don't think that people understand when we're talking about 20% that they know that that means that everything gets cut 20%, not just fire. public works, not just parks and recreation. So in essence, if you think about that, and if we couldn't cut them by 21% and I'll use 21%, OK? If we couldn't cut them by 21%, and I'm talking about police and fire, then you're gone. just gone. Let's not talk about 20% reduction. Let's talk about you're out of the building, everybody's out of the building, all of you folks are out of the building. I'm just being honest.

And yet we don't think we're going there. No, we are not because people are smart enough not to do that. We're smart enough not to do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure I follow Commissioner Constantine. I think it was pretty clear, or at least I thought, this was not as originally floated by the governor, that first responders were out of this picture. It's clear they are on the table to be cut under the current Initiative that's going to go on about 21% We're all clear on that. I think that's maybe that's what Commissioner was trying to say But it was pretty clear in the early presentation That we've tried to make the public aware of that So here's what I will a couple questions in the parks since we're on the parks recreation Are there any bond issues or contractual agreements of property that we've either been given or purchased that require us to do certain things that cannot be omitted? In other words, are there any capital improvements or O&M that we are contractually bound to do, either through a bond initiative on any natural lands or otherwise, or a parcel that's been given to the county for natural lands. Are there any of that that exists?

The short answer would be yes. And all of that would need to be pulled out, and obviously we need to examine each one of those cases. So as we dig deeper,

There's cuts that we may be discussing that actually can't be cut on certain properties because of the way that the county came by those properties and so forth. So I would very much like to know that. One thing I note, and I'm not advocating that we do this, but the delivery method of the services in this division. One's a fee-based. I've heard nothing about a fee-based schedule. Again, I'm not advocating for that, but I think if we're going to decide and make decisions, that should be part of the discussion. I'm not necessarily in favor of that, but I think that should be full discussion.

Commissioner Zinbauer, I think the county manager is...

Absolutely. Thank you, Chairman. And Commissioner, you're right on track. And that is part of when we looked at if Amendment 3 goes forward, that would be part of our first phase to bring back. And that is to the point of this board, if it's something, a critical service that the board needs and wants to continue with, along with, of course, residents and business owners, another revenue source would have to come. come up with a fee or something regarding to keep that service available so that those options would be presented if this goes forward great you know the thing that makes this so difficult for this county is when I came on this board back in 2018 I

There had not been enough decisions made to turn this ship after the depression of 2008 and 2009, the big crash. So this county was already working with not enough employees, not enough capital assets, tens of millions of dollars of deferred improvements to the capital assets that taxpayers had already paid for over the previous 30 years. We're just now in the last couple years getting back to a level of service with our employees, taking care of those deferred improvements to those capital assets that left deferred for 10, 20 years. And here we are. I make no argument that there are probably entities out there in this state that spend like drunken sailors. This is not one of them. In an organization, whether it's a business or otherwise, you can only cut your way out of overhead so far. You either have to increase revenue, and I would say we're pretty darn efficient at this county. Are there some things we could go without and our citizens may not? lose their complete mind over? Probably a few, but not to the magnitude of the percentages that we're talking here. And so I would also like to see a breakdown over the last, say, 10 to 15 years of the state mandates and the costs associated with that, because I think there is a fair conversation that this really needs to start at the state level, since they have so much money in their budget and they've been paying down all their outstanding debts, but yet pushing over to us and cities mandates that we are funding here locally and understand what those are. That would be very helpful to have that monetized for this discussion as we move further. But thank you. I know this is tough work. We appreciate you all doing this. What makes matters even more complicated for our staff We started a discussion about efficiency before efficiency was a thing. I think two or three years ago, we started this discussion in our annual retreat and charging our staff with going back and bringing forward any efficiencies they could find within their divisions and bring that back to the commission. And we've had that discussion each and every year. And then we cut and we cut and we cut. Reality is you can't provide services if you don't have the personnel and the funding to do it. And I think that's ultimately what the questions are going to come down to for our voters. So it's going to be a tough decision when they go to the polls to make their decision. So it is our job to educate them. And thank you all very much for doing the hard work and, unfortunately, spending a lot of taxpayers' dollars digging into this to bring this forward. But it's rightfully done to educate our public. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd just like to provide a little bit of clarity in terms of, I think on either slide 15 or page 553 of the book, There is a reference to unfunded mandates. It's sitting at 5% of the $562 million. So we have a number, roughly $28 million by my count. Are you looking for detail behind the $28 million?

I'm looking for detail and specifically what those are. Okay.

We can provide that. They are right there.

You can get that history. So, Commissioner Zimbauer, so are you looking for, in each one of these categories, the slide that he has on the screen, the breakdown by dollar amount?

I'll make it easy. Line item detail for all unfunded mandates. That would be helpful for me.

All right. Any further discussion? All right. County Manager.

Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Thank you, Mr. Durer. Next we'll have Public Works and Ms. O'Loury. Yeah.

The property tax-funded budgets for our transportation services total $58.6 million. This includes 164 full-time positions. A 20% proportionate share reduction equates to $11.7 million. Tim, could you pull the mic closer?

Sure. Excuse me.

Thank you.

The $58 million makes up approximately 11% of our property tax revenues.

Perfect. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman, members of the Commission, as well as County Manager. I'm Tanya O'Lorry. I'm the Director of Public Works here at Seminole County. You know, before we begin, I was putting this presentation together You know, transportation is the backbone of our community. It's the back, not of Seminole County, it's of every community out there. And as we travel on city roads or county roads or state roads, it all works together, right? We have and we provide choices. So our Signal timing needs to work together. Our turn lanes from our road to a city road needs to work together. So as we go through this presentation and we talk about potential service reductions, it's not just going to affect our roads, but it is going to have an impact on all of our transportation system, whatever that may be, whether you're taking sun rail and, you know, those lights and all the signals coming down. It all works together and we spent a lot of money to ensure that we move people effectively. And so as we go through the service, I just want sort of us to keep that in mind because we're going to affect all of transportation with any kind of reduction. I was here in July, and we talked a lot about some of the information we're going to see today. I do want to just comment real quickly on something that Commissioner Zinbauer talked about, just getting back to pre-recession. At Public Works, we have about 150 people. We are not back to pre-recession numbers at this point. So all of the services that we provide, those are with numbers that we haven't while we continue to put infrastructure out there, we really haven't grown. So we're really, really, as you said, working very effectively and we don't have a lot of fat. We are into the bone as we talk about service reduction. So I just wanted to make sure. So at the county, we provide the maintenance of all of our county road and stormwater system maintenance. And you hear a lot about system because all of this works together and it's really important. As I indicated in July, we maintain over 1,900 lane miles of road. That's over 2,700 roadways that we touch. We repair over 1,000 potholes a year. We maintain over 900 sidewalks, as well as maintaining over 130,000 feet of ditches and canals. Our traffic management system has 419 signals. We maintain, as we indicated in July, city signals, state signals, and county signals. We also maintain over 32,000 signs and 450 miles of fiber infrastructure. Thank you, Tim. Tim is my Vanna. We also provide all the inspection and maintenance of our bridges, all of the trails that Rick just got done and that have those bridges. We inspect those and maintain those. Our capital improvement program and our construction management, that's funded by our one cent sales tax. But remember the people that manage all of that, are from our property taxes.

So if we have reduction, we won't be able to manage as much as we have in the past.

We also, as people come into, and I know you all get so many calls, and we do too, of all the right-of-way permitting, we manage all of that. And really, remember for post, especially right now, post-hurricane disaster response, Public Works is first out on the scene, right? We are clearing the roads for our emergency response. We are assessing flooding. We are closing roads if there's flooding. And so we are first out on the scene for that post-hurricane response. And then while Public Works doesn't manage all of the mass transit services that is provided here in the county, it is certainly a transportation service. And we do have three systems that we fund here in the county to move people, which is what we need to do. So as we talk about service, so this is sort of the glum part of the presentation as Rick had. As we talk about the service reductions of 20%, and again, remember it's into the bone, there is no fat here. We would propose to immediately freeze positions if this passes in November. Now that's gonna have an effect. Just because this won't go into effect until 2028, Freezing positions have an effect because we won't be able to provide the level of service that our residents and visitors are used to. Cutting that 20% would mean about 26 FTEs. And like Rick, and like what was talked about during Rick's presentation, we also have outside vendors who perform services for us. This will have an impact to them, also our suppliers. You know, we buy a lot of fiber. We buy, you know, traffic signals. We buy, you know, sand. for our sandbags. So all of that has an impact. So it's not just here in Seminole County and our people. So the next part of the presentation is really to talk about the reduction of services and what the 20% would mean. And as you said, it was not a fun day when we talked about this a few days. This is not what we wanna do. This is not what we wanna present, but this will be the consequences of a 20% cut. So in terms of our flood control stormwater system, we would have to have less frequent cleaning of our ditch and culverts. And as you know, when you don't have the clearing and the cleaning, that just has a lot of, clogging means more flooding. So we just wouldn't have, necessarily the personnel or the supplies to be able to do it. We'd also have to provide less frequent cleaning and clearing of our retention ponds and our canal maintenance. That would mean more sediment going into our system, which means it would just create more impacts of flood. And Kim is coming up after me, but really a lot more sediments that are getting into our system, which means more pollutants going into our lakes. And so that's just another effect of these cuts not being able to keep up with our infrastructure. Right now, we pride ourselves on if we get a call for a pothole repair, over 1,000 repaired a year, we respond within 24 to 48 hours. We would have to lengthen that response to a week or more, and we would really have to prioritize that on safety. Those potholes would have to get big enough for us to be able, because we just won't have as much personnel to be able to respond to that. We're looking at doubling the time of mowing. We do six cycles of mowing our slopes a year and nine on flat surfaces, nine cycles, so you're talking only the slopes getting mowed three times a year and the flat four or five times a year. And that's mainly done by outside services. So that's not necessarily our folks. So again, the impacts outside of Seminole County. We would also eliminate supplemental. Our personnel do go out to places if we get complaints or if there's a public safety nuisance, we will go out there and do supplemental mowing. We would eliminate that. We would reduce the ability to repair our curb and gutter and of course with our gutter again that's a system right the water has to flow through the gutters to get into the storm great to get into our ponds and so when you have that kind of cracking and not being able to repair it that whole flow is impeded We would propose to eliminate street sweeping. And so that, again, would mean more debris into our stormwater system, which impacts Kim. And she's going to, because they do get credits with the BMAP and all of that. And of course, the cleanliness of our roadways won't look as great as they do today. We would also limit tree trimming and removal, and just really prioritize based on safety risks. We just removed quite a large oak tree in the last couple weeks, and we were worried for the safety of pedestrians, and so we would prioritize that. um we would also reduce the annual roadway striping by half so this year we're on track to stripe about 50 miles we also do 300 plus arrows and other symbols so we would reduce all that by half and that's a lot with all of the the rain and the night and things like that it's just reduced visibility as well as our pedestrians so we would of course prioritize that for our pedestrian safety. We would also limit our guardrail and handrail repairs. Again, we would have longer re-response times. We would put everything, of course, log it in, and this really prioritize on public safety. Right now, we do about $2 million a year on sidewalk repair. One million comes out of our penny. Another million comes out of our general revenue. We would just do half a million. So Florida is beautiful. People use our sidewalks, but we would have to really prioritize that repair. In terms, so that's sort of the roadway in our flood, or our stormwater system, now moving on to our traffic signals. We talked about this, I think, in July, as well as just earlier. We do maintain a lot of signals for our cities and the state. We do get dollars to do that. We would have to reduce our traffic signal maintenance. And what does that mean? If there's a problem with the signal maintenance, it would go on flash, which is never a good thing with moving people around this county until we could get out there to repair it. One of the things that we said that we would do also was evaluate all our traffic signals and see if there are any ones that are sort of on those secondary roads and turn those back into four-way stops because we will not have the personnel to be able to maintain all those signals. We would also reduce the traffic signal retiming. I talk a lot about that. That's a big benefit for us to be able to sort of time those lights. It moves traffic through the area very effectively during peak hour. We would have to reduce that and rely more on our partners, Metro Plan, FDOT, which Doesn't necessarily mean that Seminole County retiming will be their top priority as it is ours. In terms of our traffic management system, so we do a lot and we use outside consultant services. When we see that we do have a problem during peak hour, we do a lot of traffic studies and to see if we have to, increase the length of a turn lane, or if we need a turn lane, we would reduce that a lot. So that just means any complaints that we see as a problem during peak hour, we would just have to put that on, put it as a prioritized list. As well as our traffic data collection, all those little tubes we put out there to see how our level of service is and our roadways, we would reduce that as well, which is outside vendors. In terms of streetlights, we would limit the lighting to critical locations, maybe reduce the amount of time the streetlights are on, and may remove some of those streetlights based on an evaluation. As I mentioned earlier, we have about 32,000 signs in this county. We have them all GIS. When they go down, we make new ones, we replace them, and that's part of our traffic management system so people know what our speed limits are, what our no U-turns, things like that. We wouldn't be as able to respond as quickly as we do today. and this county has spent you know 450 miles of fiber in a county that's a lot of fiber we have spent a lot of money through the first you know the one penny sales tax um putting all of those uh signals into fiber um we would look to reduce that maintenance which means that we wouldn't be able to communicate necessarily with our traffic signals if they go down, and all of our county infrastructure, like our buildings and stuff, is also all on the fiber system, so that would have an impact to our day-to-day operations. We also provide a lot of support services. The survey we have in our roads and stormwater section really provides services throughout the county, not just for public works. We would look to reduce those services, which means if anybody needs survey and they would probably have to contract them through outside contractors. We would also eliminate our community service worker program, which means the reduction of the ability to pick up trash. and litter, which is significant for a lot of reasons, because of bigger pieces of debris becoming projectiles during storms, as well as getting into our stormwater system and causing clogs and not being able to move that water. Finally, I know, and I've mentioned this before, our engineering really provides a lot of services to your offices in terms of if a resident comes in and has some questions or has a problem, we really send our engineers out to assess it and to see what can be done, as well as our roads and stormwater folks. We would just not have the ability to respond as quickly as we do today. And then finally I wanted for this portion is to really end on the hurricane disaster. All of these reductions, as you can see, will have a impact on our ability to respond. If we don't have the staffing that we have today, to be able to get out there and remove that debris. The old timers, we like to call it cut and push. We cut the debris and we push it out of the way for Chief Kinley and our Sheriff's Department to be able to get to those people in need after a storm. And this would be reduced. Moving on to our mass transit. So as you know, we do still have about $3 million worth of fixed routes that are going into Orange County. We would assess that and look to either eliminate that or reduce it. Paratransit is about 8.7 million. That's really a federal sort of mandate. We would try to look and see what we could do to see how we could reduce that as well. SunRail is about $11.3 million bill. And I know we've heard a lot of people say, well, just give it back to the state. And that is, of course, a policy decision. But remember, by agreement, any reductions to SunRail means it comes out of Seminole County's work program. And so any improvements that DOT has in the work program Whether it's resurfacing, whether it's capacity, that would be reduced by the amount that DOT would be paying for SunRail. So again, it's a reduction of transportation services in Seminole County. Finally, for Scout, 20% reduction would mean to either eliminate service or reduce the number of vehicles, which means the wait times would increase. Right now, the July average was about 42 minutes, so that would more than likely increase for that wait time. And finally, I just wanted to end on this slide. I showed this slide to you in July. We move a lot of people and vehicles a day in Seminole County, whether that's on county roadways, on city roadways, state roadways, all of the service impacts that we just discussed will have an impact on the ability to move that many people through our county. effectively and efficiently so with that i will try to leave on a high note so i we did have a department meeting last thursday a department-wide to go over this presentation because we didn't want this presentation to be the first that our folks and I feel is our best asset is our people. And we had of the 150 people, about 130 people there at our extension services. And they asked a lot of good questions and Chris Patton was there with all of the material and there wasn't one piece of material left that Chris got. And they wanted to know what this means because they wanted to educate the residents and the people they interact with on a daily basis of what that would mean for them and so i'm just so proud of the public works department because they really truly care about this community and they really want to do the best job and they want the residents to know what this could look like so with that if there's any questions i'd be more than happy to take them thank you very much christopher zimba

got a couple for you all and then for the county attorney in this regards and i respect your input and everything that you and your staff have put together and you've been in this business for quite some time are you trying to ask my age no i'm not i was trained by three very fine women Not to go down that path. But you've worked for a much larger organization in public service than Seminole County, correct?

Yes.

How many times in all the years that you've been in this role have you received a call from somebody that says, don't fix the pothole or don't fix the sidewalk?

Never.

Has that ever occurred?

Never.

After a hurricane or storm, have you ever received phone calls saying, hey, don't remove the debris, just leave it there for a couple months and let it rot a little bit?

Never.

Never happened?

These are easy questions. Right.

Well, I'm just trying to obviously make a point, but going to the county attorney, if we do arrive at a point where Some of these assets have to not be repaired, whether it be sidewalks, potholes, and so forth. What liability, if any, do the taxpayers have? And I ask this question because, as the chair knows, the chair usually gets notice of lawsuits regarding sidewalks and fences and potholes and so forth. Is there a liability there, a cost to the taxpayer?

Commissioner, generally speaking, when you're making changes and reducing services, government services, that's a discretionary planning function of the government, which the government is immune from that kind of liability. The risk is when we're changing these mowing schedules or road repair schedules, we need to make sure we... accurately and promptly reflect our policies, our schedules, because if we're not meeting those schedules once they've been changed, that's where the liability comes in. If we say we're going to mow every three months and we don't, and then there's an accident based on a visibility issue, that exposes the county. However, so... So if we're going to reduce services, we need to make sure that all of our policies, all of our schedules are updated to reflect the reduction in schedules and reduction in services. But just changing those policies standing alone is a discretionary government function for which the county is immune.

Maybe my question wasn't quite spelled out well enough.

Well, I thought that was a really great answer.

It was. It was. It was fantastic. So if we decide we're not fixing sidewalks because there's no money there to do it, and somebody trips or falls, breaks an ankle, breaks whatever, do we have any responsibility there? Because we didn't fix it?

Of course, this is a lawyer answer. Every case is different. But if we're put on notice that a sidewalk is hazardous and then somebody falls and hurts themselves, we definitely have liability there. But again, you go back to on what schedule is the county supposed to be inspecting and repairing their sidewalks. So I would go back to making sure that however often we intend to do it, however often we can afford to do it, that our policies reflect that.

Great. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the answers from both. Just to flush those out so the public is fully aware what some of this stuff really means. I mean, it's the things that aren't said sometimes that you need to worry about versus the things that are said. But good work. I appreciate the deep dives you've done in working through that. I reflect back. Like 2018 or 2019, we had a discussion, and Commissioner Lockhart and I were fairly new here. We had started getting complaints as new commissioners about – The infrequency of mowing the medians and the sides to roads because of the 2009-2008 downturn, the county made a decision to only do it, I guess, twice a year instead of the six times a year or three times a year versus six. And I think we're finally just recently in the last couple of years gotten back to the... previous schedule that you know which you know we had complaints about rodents and mice and things running around out of these things in people's yards and just complain it doesn't look worth a hoot when they're going to their home or their office so forth so thank you all very much for for that good information

Commissioner DeLaurie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So let's go back a little further, back in the early 2000s. The policy of the county back then used to be you'd call in a pothole by 9 a.m. It was fixed by 5 p.m. That was the policy. And county staff did a phenomenal job in doing that. And then around 07, 08, that had a change. And then each budget session since then, it's changed quite a bit. Also going back then, there was a large discussion in 07, I think it was, where we talked about stormwater fees because the seven cities have stormwater fees and the county does not have a stormwater fee. We pay for stormwater out of our general fund and out of the one-set sales tax. And... Not gonna go into details, but you can all watch the tapes. We actually talked about a stormwater fee, and it was packed. And what I mean by packed, we literally had to set up chairs and monitors outside in tents because people were being bussed in from all around the county. And we did not move forward with that, but it's always been an issue out there because the county does not have a stormwater fee and the seven cities do. So we pay for it out of our general fund. I just want to make sure that that's out there because I don't want to go there.

I've already lived through it a couple times.

I was one of the ones in the parking lot that couldn't get a seat in there. I understand that. We won't go into those details.

But I do have a couple questions, and that is when it comes to stormwater and TMDLs, are we required to maintain... TMDLs, total maximum daily loads of pollutants at a certain level. And is that required by state and federal?

Yes. So I think for Kim. And if we're going to address that later on. Yeah, that's part of the presentation.

But you did talk about stormwater. That's why I'm bringing it to you. And then the next question I have is when you talk about road maintenance, how would that be addressing on emergency vehicles response times and how would that affect us?

Yeah, that's a good question because, so like I said, we would have to set standards as going with county attorney on what is public safety. So that's later on.

Okay. And then the next question I have is when it comes to road maintenance and lack thereof, how does that affect the economic viability of a business? of people getting to or from those businesses?

It's the backbone. Transportation, as I said, yeah.

I understand that, but that will be reviewed and evaluated at a later date. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, Commissioner Walker.

Going back to the ice cube tray, I want to ask you if you all have fully evaluated all of the projects that are maintenance and various and sundry other things that you are doing in public works that are currently being spent out of the general fund that could be shifted to the sales tax. Understanding that the sales tax is for capital and isn't supposed to be used for ordinary maintenance, or can't be used for ordinary maintenance, have you evaluated any opportunities of shifting from general fund to the sales tax?

I think this county and just coming in here, you have already done that. For example, the resurfacing program is out of the sales tax, not out of the general fund. The sidewalk repairs that we talked about, a portion of that is from the sales tax. A lot of what you have already implemented is part of that. The routine maintenance is what comes out of the general fund. So we've already really, you've got, a lot of that already shifted now. When you talk about lean-mean fighting, this is what you guys have already operated under, and efficiently and effectively. But then for cuts, it's really right into the bone.

I wanted to make sure we got that on the record because I think there is a lot of misconception about which revenues can be used for what types of services. And someone might say, well, all of these sidewalk repairs, just do them out of the penny sales tax. And it's been made very clear to us as a board, and I'm not sure that all of our citizens fully grasp what revenues can be spent on which expenditures. And so if we're extending the life of a capital asset, we can use penny sales tax. Is that correct?

Correct.

But if it's routine maintenance, we cannot. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay. That's a big distinction in these conversations. I think it's important that we continue to educate on that piece. Thank you.

Well, and I'll pick up from there and say I think another big distinction is that we actually – are very aggressive about operating within the rules of governance. We don't go into the warning track just by the nature of all five of us. And so something that keeps resonating with me about this is the fact that the impact of this on a county that operates efficiently and operates very, very clearly within the rules and boundaries of the governance is is probably most harmed amen and so one of the questions that i have for either miss olor or or you mr gray you've both been in other counties how do we compare from a staffing perspective what is your evaluation again nothing like being on the spot no i'm putting you on the spot because i i think the point is really important to the seminole county residents that We have done what we can do. There's always room for improvement. We look for it every year, to Commissioner Zimbauer's point. But, I mean, I'm out there. I deal with, I look at censuses for a living. So I can answer this question myself, but you two are experts, and you see it as it relates to the operations of a county.

And I'll go first, and I'll let Ms. O'Loury for her experience. And as you said, I've been, I think, at every county in Central Florida, so I know a lot about how they're funded. This county, I was very amazed when I came in. I did my, really, audit and sat down with Mr. Jackson. We went through each of the funds on how We provide services. What this county has done remarkable at is actually moved things that they possibly can out of property tax revenue into what we call a special revenue that is restricted, that can only be used for that source. And if you look at our general fund, And I would welcome anyone who wants to sit down, discuss. We're very transparent. We will open up everything. We will show them and actually maybe even learn something from others that want to come and share that. And we did a lot of that last year, as you know, when we went through our budget process. But really, if you look at our general fund and the way our property taxes are allocated, it is – Clearly at Bare Bones, it is mostly public safety. It's sheriff and the fire department emergency management. And again, we have looked at a lot of other special revenue opportunities that are restricted that could be used for services that we provide our residents and business owners. Other counties in Central Florida are going through the same thing. I personally, as a manager, have done that exercise, especially as we've talked about the downturn of the economy in 2008, 9, 10. We all had to go through that exercise. Do you remember during 2007, 8, we also had a mandatory rollback of millage rates from the state legislature and that we had to go through that process. So it's almost every probably, I'd say, five to 10 years we go through this process and we really look at it. This county, of all the counties that I have worked in, has actually done a really remarkable job about really putting property tax dollars to direct services that really enhance the quality of life and emergency response here in the county.

Thank you. Anything to add? You can say no.

No, I would say, you know, as Commissioner Zimbabwe, I've been around for a long time. No, but Seminole County has always been known for that fiscally responsible and really operating as a business. And it's known throughout the region for that. And as somebody mentioned, when you have a government operating like that, these kind of cuts are devastating because you don't have that fact. You don't. And so you just have to start cutting services. And that's not what we want to do at all because we want to maintain the infrastructure that was built utilizing tax dollars as well.

I would like to get a few things from a clarifying factor here on the record. You did mention that you would turn traffic signals into four-way stops in order to stop maintaining them, meaning the traffic signal would continue to blink, take down a traffic signal that we've already paid for.

Yeah. Well, they could blink, or we just shut it off, bag it, right? Bag it. So that could be done. Now, we don't want to do that. I mean, the traffic signal was warranted. These wouldn't be on your major arterials, obviously. More on the side streets, two-lane to two-lane type of thing.

So what I think is interesting about this discussion, there was also talk about streetlights and other things. assets that have already been purchased with taxpayer money, is that while we don't want to do that and we may not do that, I would tell you I would personally try to figure out every way that we didn't have to do that. That could be expected in neighboring communities. So it is on the table. I think from an educational perspective, it's good to put it out there. I don't want anybody to panic about that happening here. But what I would say is very realistic is that our look at mass transit... needs to continue whether this passes or not. I think we're all aligned on that. I think that's one way to get ready for whatever happens, whether this passes or not. Something else will. And we're already ahead of that as well. Any other comments with regard to this?

I would just say that following up on that is that the public needs to understand the five of us sitting here I think we have a core value that money doesn't grow on trees. We're not wasting taxpayers' dollars. And we're probably one of the first, one of us, to raise the red flag if we see something that doesn't make sense from a financial feasibility or efficiency standpoint. And I'm as guilty as anybody else. Before I was in government and got a look behind the curtain, government's always fat and happy and taking too many of my tax dollars. But you've heard me say it. My first budget session that I went through at this county, when I looked at everything, I said, y'all are so fiscally conservative, you're about to go out of business or no longer be able to supply the services you need to supply to these residents. And that was the truth. And finally, we've slowly come back to a reasonable level of service. But I would invite any citizen to come walk with me through this building and see somebody goofing off or a group of employees sitting around not doing anything because it's just not happening. If anything, they're running around with their arrow on fire because they've got too much to do and not enough staff to get it done. And I think that's a core principle we all hold up here on this dais. And like I said, there's always one of us usually raises it. When we see something, we say something. And to your point, we will be penalized if this passes, very much like when we put the officers in the schools and we were one of the first, if not the first, in the state to do that. And then the state subsidized other counties to do it. We had already paid for it. We weren't going to get any money from the county or from the state. But our residents have time and again... with the proper information, prove it to us, they make the right decisions. And that's this part of this exercise is to make sure they get as much information as we possibly can. So thank you again.

Thank you. All right. I think we're ready to move on to water quality and mosquito control.

Thank you.

Mosquito control through AI.

Up next is water quality and mosquito control with Kim Ornberg. The total watershed management budget coming from property taxes is $3.1 million. A 20% reduction would be about $600,000, and their budget includes 21 full-time positions. This $3.1 million makes up about one-half a percent of our total property tax revenues. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Tim. We'll start with our water quality. Once again, we all know the Seminole County motto is Florida's natural choice, which is so true because we have such an abundance of amazing natural resources that we enjoy and want to protect. So we'll start with some quick stats. We have over 200 named lakes, including our three Great Lakes, Lakes Jessup, Harney, and Monroe. Our major rivers include the St. Johns, which makes up the county's eastern and northern borders, and is where all the county's surface water eventually drains to. And here's a fun fact. It's one of only 14 rivers in the nation that's been designated an American Heritage River. Then there's the Big and Little Wekiva Rivers, which are designated as national, wild and scenic rivers, as well as state aquatic preserves and outstanding Florida waters. And finally, the Big and Little Econ-Laktachi or Econ Rivers, which are also outstanding Florida waters. And now to our springs. Everyone's familiar with the Wekiwa Spring, our first magnitude outstanding Florida spring, but we have several others that range in size and magnitude, including San Lando, Palm, Clifton, Starbuck, and Little Ginger Ale. Altogether, there's about 22,000 acres, or 10% of the county, that's made up of surface water. So with all of these great natural resources, We have several programs that help us maintain and protect them. Our lake management program monitors and manages both public and private water bodies. We have a comprehensive water chemistry and biological monitoring program. We conduct investigations into illegal dumping and pollution discharges. We have an extensive public education and outreach program, which includes our public service announcements and our water atlas. Our shoreline protection program was initiated just a few years ago to help further safeguard our water bodies. And we also conduct large and small scale restoration and capital projects like the one we just completed recently on the Little Wekiva. So, as you saw from the budget numbers, it's not a large program, but we have 10 full-time staff, scientists, and technicians, and two part-time interns. We manage 26 lakes or chains of lakes through the county's MSBU program, which as mentioned before, are self-taxing districts. Our staff collects an average of 9,000 water chemistry samples a year, conducts over 400 lake and 200 shoreline inspections, as well as over 200 educational events and 100 resident requested environmental investigations each year. The program is primarily focused on the unincorporated areas, but our staff is always willing to help residents and citizens regardless of where they live. Most of the program's activities actually positively impact the cities anyway because water doesn't know jurisdictional boundaries. And this is why we established over the years inter-local agreements with our city and regional partners to work cooperatively together on protecting our water resources. The water quality program was started in the late 90s as a result of state and federal unfunded mandates and regulatory requirements, including the Federal Clean Water Act, the state's impaired waters rule, water quality criteria, and basin management action plans, which identify regional strategies to protect and restore our water bodies. As you can see from the colors on this map, about two-thirds of the county falls into an impaired watershed. In the nearly three decades since the program's inception, we have seen significant improvements in our stormwater runoff and in many of our natural systems through education, collaboration, monitoring, and restoration. But we still have farther to go. So what are the impacts to the program? We would likely see reductions in our current service levels, including to our monitoring network, our education, and a more limited ability to assist and provide free technical advice to our residents. We may have to scale back the program to maintain only minimum regulatory compliance required instead of the holistic cooperative watershed approach we currently have in place. Ultimately, this could result in less protection of our natural systems and could lead to degraded water quality with potentially higher long-term costs to the community in order to meet these water quality standards because the cost of cleanup and restoration is more expensive and difficult than the cost of prevention. especially this ties into what Tani was talking about with reductions in maintenance as well. We may end up having to seek alternative funding sources in order to meet the long-term regulatory compliance and to maintain the established levels of service. All right, now on to our mosquito control program. And while this is not a state or federally mandated program, it is a state-certified program, which receives a small amount, about $60,000 a year from the state. The mission of the program is to protect the health and well-being of our residents through the control of mosquitoes and mosquito-borne illnesses. The current program was created about 20 years ago and established a proactive, science-based, integrated pest management program that's data-driven and uses the most environmentally friendly products available, which are tested continually and rotated to ensure effectiveness. Listed here are some of the activities within our program. We have our surveillance, which includes sentinel chickens, mosquito traps, landing rates, and mosquito identification using our new AI assisted system, which you may have seen recently on the local news. We have source reduction, larviciding, which is the most efficient way to eliminate mosquito populations before they reach adulthood, and targeted fogging, which is the activity most people are familiar with, and an extensive public education program including public service announcements, individual residential inspections, and educational door hangers that identify breeding habitats. So our mosquito control program, unlike the water quality, is a countywide program and includes all seven cities in addition to the incorporated areas. Our team assists our nearly 500,000 residents and covers the entire 220,000 acres of the county. This is all accomplished by a very small, mighty, and efficient team of only 10 full-time employees. When compared to other mosquito programs, our current program, the cost per resident and per acre are the lowest in the region. And as you can see, we accomplish quite a bit every year with this team. They address over 2,000 customer service requests. They fog over 160,000 acres, larvicide around 8,500 acres of standing water, and respond to an average of 13 disease vector each year. I'd say these are pretty impressive statistics for only 10 people. All right, so what are the potential impacts of the program? As with all the other programs, we would likely see a reduction in our current service levels. The most visible reduction would be to our fogging program due to chemical costs and the cost of extended staff hours needed to complete the missions at the current levels. Our staff provides fogging services not only to neighborhoods, but for special events like the Fourth of July, as well as to our sports complexes, the zoo, and to the airport. Our ability to respond to resident requests could also be reduced. Budget reductions may result in a shift from the current prevention-focused mission or proactive to an outbreak response-driven program, more reactive. This could ultimately lead to increased mosquito populations and a higher risk of mosquito-borne diseases. And again, alternative funding sources would need to be considered in order to continue the current county-wide service and response levels. So that's all I have. But I conclude my presentation. But reaching back to what was asked as far as when Tawny was speaking, the NPDES has a minimum maintenance requirements for the stormwater systems. But again, with all of our programs, we try to do more than the minimum and responses

you know that would have a negative impact on those so so we do more than the minimum to keep our water clean yes let's hope we don't get faulted for that agreed then you could be the hero to come in and save our water after it gets ruined let's not do it that way all right commissioners any comments

Yes. I noticed both Kim and Tawny, and I don't remember if Rick said this or not, but I've noticed a couple of times the last slide identified we'll have to find alternative funding. Can you tell me what you're envisioning as alternative funding and why would we not be seeking that already?

But as you know, so the state sets up how we receive money. And there's only two ways that local governments receive dollars. And it's through taxes or fees. That's all what it is. There are another what we call non-ad valorem fees that could actually be used instead of ad valorem property taxes. And so that is whereas a service when it's assessed right now you know we use our property tax dollars for say for public safety but there are other options that we could use that could actually be a non-property tax or not what they call non-advalor fee that the board then would have to discuss we'd have to do a study to ensure the equity of it and things like that so that's a whole nother it'd be a whole other process but this the state they they do allow us to do go go that avenue so that's one Other, as we always seek, is grants and other special revenue opportunities. We're already, the city managers, myself, all got together a month, six weeks ago to talk about, again, we continue this dialogue all the time about sharing of services, things of that nature as well. So the state has a book of revenues. I forget what the, it's called the local government revenue, yeah, the green book. Because we're restricted to exactly the revenues that the state allows us to collect. And some of them don't pertain to us at all, but I would say half of them probably could. And that would be another exercise that our staff and that we would have to talk to the board about, but other revenue opportunities that could come into the county. complicated, and right now the series of going through that is very extensive. So it could not happen overnight. It would need probably a good six-month to a year discussion on how we get to the end. potential for some grants here and there but if I'm just reading between the lines and saying it very plainly it would still be our citizens paying for it but out of a different pocket correct and some citizens who could actually maybe benefit from this property tax amendment three could actually be paying more for this new type of source that we would have to fund be more like a user fee correct I'll get off my soapbox. The cost is what the cost is. And I'll tell you, the private sector a lot of times dictates the cost that we provide to our residents because all of our supplies, materials, come from the private sector. Again, we don't make anything. All we do is deliver services to our residents and business owners. So usually the private sector establishes what that is. We have to competitively bid that, meaning we can't make deals behind the scene. It's all publicly bid out, and that's negotiated out in public, and then we move forward with that.

So I'm assuming we've already looked and highlighted in the green book those potential additional fees that would be appropriate in Seminole. Maybe appropriate is the wrong word. Allowable in Seminole County. At what point after November 3rd should this pass? Will we start digging into that so that this board has the opportunity because you're saying you need a six month to a year lead time Do you have it?

Yeah, absolutely. And as Mr. Jicks put out on one of his earlier slides, so if this passes, and I know I've spoken with each of you, in fact, the chairman and I just spoke about this recently, is that we would immediately come in January to correct. This is not something that we're just sitting... and then just waiting if this happens. That's why we're having these hearings right now. We're already looking at if this happens, then what else needs to occur. So January, we will already start that discussion with the board, a public meeting discussing. Just think about FIRE. Right now, FIRE is funded through our MSG, our property taxes for FIRE. There is an opportunity where you can do a fire fee, but that fire fee is restricted. That can only be for fire operations. It cannot be used for, say, paramedics or anything medical. So that would have to have another fee attached to it. So a lot of these are a combination of fees that would have to come in to make that that function whole, if you will. But to answer your question, immediately we would start in January because what my goal would then be by the time we hit our budget work sessions in the summer, next summer, you will already have a road path and a road mark and a path forward of how you want us to move forward on not only what services you want, but how we would fund those services. and the level of how we fund it.

Thank you. I think the simplified answer to that question is the pre-work is already being done at the staff level so that if this thing, if we get to a yes in November, it starts right immediately of now what do we do? And that includes involving citizens in terms of input and what do you want us to take away, what do you want us to keep, and how do you want, it's going to have to be funded somehow, all of those discussions that we've had here already. So this Part of the reason why we're doing these hearings is to be extremely proactive so at the point that they're ready to bring it back to us, it's not the first time we're hearing all this. It's to speed to market concept of being ready to act effectively.

And then to identify, one of the things that the, I guess, exercises we went through as a team, all of our managers, directors, we had probably 60 to 70 people going through this. What would the experience be for a resident or business owner if this was to pass on a service level? And that's what we want to communicate today. Not how, if this does pass, how would we fix it in a sense, but what would the service level look like if this was to pass? And then if it does pass, then you're right, Commissioner Lockhart and the Chair, is that we would then have to have a series of budget work sessions All right. If the community and the board wants this service, at what level, what type of fee would we have to maintain that level at or charge at? Sure.

yes commissioners and our I would just dovetailing into that we are in a much better position in my opinion than many other entities because this board has pushed this staff for multiple years to burn efficiencies forth every single year during budget time in advance so we're constantly looking at those deficiencies and as we move forward. So it's not something that this staff is like, oh my gosh, we've never done this before. Now what do we do? They do that by nature because this board insists that be done. So I think to everybody's point, we are starting early. It is well thought out. And as things go, we'll be prepared to hit the accelerator when it needs to be.

Well, and it's a little bit of a double-edged sword.

Right.

We have been very effective, and we do this as a regular course of action in every budgeting cycle, and that's been expected for years and years. We're coming out of a timeframe when there was a, what I would call, hyper-conservatism that actually let current assets go untended. And now we're faced with, can we cut further? And we don't want to go back to where we were. Correct. So we've been there and know the outcome of that. So we are really ahead of the game and to know that action has to happen. And that's exactly the path that we're on. Was that raising a hand or pointing it? No. You?

You pointed it. It's on your own. But I do have to leave a little early before lunch because I've got a commitment I can't miss.

From a process technical perspective, should these additional facilities fees or assessments be a direction that this board goes, will those show up on residents' property tax bills like their garbage currently does? Or how would we collect them?

There's multiple ways. Some of them are required to do that, and some of them are not. So it just depends on which scenario we would move forward with.

Another opportunity for education, because I think sometimes because we stack different things, MSVUs, on the property tax bill. People look at, you know, oh my gosh, my taxes went up, and it wasn't their ad valorem taxes, it was the services that they're paying for, but they're paying for it on their tax bill. So I'm thinking ahead to the phone calls that are coming. Yes.

I think one of the challenges that we had when we were looking at the millage rate is that there's no apples-to-apples comparison out there, is that others move things in and out of those buckets very readily. I would offer to you, if you look in some of our neighboring communities, they're very adept at this. So there's probably lessons to be learned on all of the other line items that are applicable. With that, can we close this portion of the discussion and move on to the next?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. Let's do it. All right, Allison, we're pretty worn out, so bring us home.

Our final department presentation is for community services, led by Director Allison Thall.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you. The property tax-funded budgets for community service is $7 million. This includes 54 full-time positions. A 20% proportionate share reduction would equate to $1.4 million.

Thank you, commissioners. Oh, I'm sorry.

One more slide.

Sorry.

The $7 million budget makes up approximately 1% of our property tax revenues.

It's the little tiny blue one. It's the little tiny blue one.

And Allison, pull that mic up, if you will.

Will do.

Thank you.

Sorry, Tim. I'm excited to get this over with for everybody. I feel like I'm the icing on the cake of a very... three-tiered depression cake, but I'll be brief. So thank you, commissioners. Alison Thal, I'm the director for the Department of Community Services. And community services encompasses, as you know, a wide range of services aimed at improving the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Our funding specifically addresses direct services, including low-income rental and utility assistance, locating housing for families at risk of becoming homeless, as well as funding our local nonprofit organizations for services such as childcare, after-school programming, meals for at-risk seniors, attainable housing initiatives, and the support of our county homeless shelters, including the Rescue Outreach Mission, Safe House, Recovery House, and Boys Town. So in anticipation of the unknown and in the spirit of being proactive, we too have identified a few immediate cost-saving measures that could be implemented in fiscal year 2027. These include freezing four of our currently vacant positions, suspending our attainable housing trust fund awards, and deferring our homeless support spending, which are funds that we earmark specifically for emergency hoteling of families and deposit assistance for families who we're actively working with. Now, for the purpose of this presentation, I'm going to share the very personal impact of the anticipated reduced funding in total over the two upcoming fiscal years, meaning fiscal year 2028 and 2029. As you're already aware, our Community Assistance Division does provide the direct service by way of individual assistance programs for past due rent and utility assistance, as well as our homeless individual grant. Our individual assistance programs currently funded at just over $578,000 a year. These funds are used exclusively to provide past due rent and utility assistance to low-income individuals and families. We currently serve roughly 227 households or about 491 individuals each year with these funds. By fiscal year 2029, with reduced funding, more than 83 of these households will now face homelessness. Our homeless individual grant programs currently funded at a little over $193,000 a year. We currently actually locate and assist over 300 homeless or borderline homeless families and individuals with finding and or keeping safe and secure housing. Without our current funding level, over 100 individuals, including children, will either become or remain homeless. Additionally, Community Services administers the annual Community Services Assistance, or CSA, grants. We're typically awarded $842,000 a year to place back into the community to serve our residents. As you can see from the list on the screen, we assist a full cross-representation of the residents of our county with our grant funds, from senior citizens to our working families to teens, right down to our most vulnerable children. The homeless shelters you see listed each specialize in sheltering unique demographic populations. So the impact of the reduced or eliminated CSA funding will ultimately directly affect an estimated 750 individuals, children, and family collectively. Those hit hardest are going to be the homebound seniors who will no longer receive meals, families who will not be able to secure food for their families or children, children losing after-school programs, child victims of sexual assault, and parents who have lost their employment because they can no longer obtain affordable childcare. The four shelters alone will potentially need to turn away almost 500 individuals, including 120 children, and return them to the streets. So similar to the Community Assistance Division, the department's Community Health Division specializes in the delivery of support services largely to our senior citizens and our seriously mentally ill residents. Almost 800 individuals will lose direct engagement with staff for assistance addressing needs such as access to medical care, prescription assistance, housing, fall prevention, food insecurity, transportation. A significant number of our seniors will remain socially isolated, and just about all of our community outreach events for seniors will likely be eliminated. And over 500 seriously and persistently mentally ill individuals are going to lose access to transportation to medical appointments and crisis medical services. Furthermore, the funding that we will now no longer be able to provide to the health department will result in over 2,500 individual services, including dental health and diabetes education, essentially potentially being eliminated. Critical medical services like infectious disease testing, physical exams, immunizations, about 1,200 direct contact services again are going to be jeopardized. So as for attainable housing, the last of our substantially supported general fund programs We would really have no choice but to recommend eliminating any funding assistance to our development partners for infrastructure and construction costs on any future attainable housing project. Although this may not stop the development of affordable housing, it will likely contribute to the reduction of the current rate of construction, simply compounding the ongoing lack of affordable housing in Seminole County. This concludes my presentation.

Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Why didn't she just say worst case scenario?

Because I'm the icing.

That's what it sounds like, worst case scenario.

Any other comments? I'll turn it back to you, County. Yes.

Minor technicality. So in your comments, you mentioned the four shelters. But on the slide, they aren't reflected as shelters. They say that they provide services. And I've had this conversation with a couple of folks in the community. Rescue Outreach Mission does a phenomenal job, and they are our only emergency shelter. But there are probably 100 or more folks housed at those other three, probably 150 or more housed. I mean, they provide food and shelter and support services also. So I just want to continue to have that conversation and make sure it's reflected in the slides is that they are sheltering. Thank you, Allison, for being the icing.

Thank you, the chairman and the board and all of our team. I know this is a difficult exercise we all went through. But again, we want to talk about reality. And this is just not like I think you had mentioned, chairman, before about this. We're not saying the sky is falling. However, we want to be very proactive and prepare. as you all have directed to me, get our residents and business owners involved and be very transparent and just say that reality is what it is. And so with that, that's all of the departments we were going to have you present to you today. On the September 15th, which is our next Board meeting we will kick it off with public safety. We have invited the sheriff as well as chief Kinley the fire department Mr. Allen Harris with emergency management Which really is the bulk of our of our property tax dollars and where they are allocated to So I appreciate your the time that you all had with us this this morning and again We'll get to wherever we need to get to

So I would just close the morning session by saying to all of you that did all of this hard work, including all of the people that are sitting at their desks watching this, we will make really good decisions on your behalf, not to worry. And that is why we're being as proactive as we're being, so that we're not crushed with last-minute decisions that could potentially happen. We'll take a very effective path to this, including all of the involvement of the teams. I applaud every member here that's brought their team into the meetings to have those discussions. And regardless of whether this passes or not, we need to keep having those discussions as we have in the past. Anything we can do to become more efficient and effective will benefit our citizens in the long run. And we've always done that, and we'll just keep doing that. So thank you to all of you, and I'll see you all at 1.30. Thank you.

. .

We have hit 1.30. And we're all raiding Commissioner Zimbauer's candy jar while he's not here, just to show you how adult we are. You just didn't get caught on the camera, but Lee Constantine is caught red-handed down there.

Got a new thing.

I am calling the meeting to order, sir.

Good.

God help us.

All right, so I will first look for proof of publication.

Move to approve. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Public hearing legislative, our first hearing today, and I appreciate our team helping the Port Authority come in the afternoon, so the first on the session is the Seminole County Port Authority budget presentation, and we have with us Andrew VanGale to present. Andrew, welcome to the podium.

Thank you. Thank you, commissioners, staff. I'm here today with our chairman, Matthew Criswell, very dedicated long-term chairman and board member, so couldn't be more pleased having him along. Today we're going to talk about our fiscal year 26-27 budget, and we know you guys have an uphill battle coming soon, possibly, and we're keenly aware that the landscape is going to be very important for the Port Authority and agencies like ours to you know, look to the future and step up and be part of, you know, solutions to what's happening out here. So we're cognizant of that and knowing that we're almost around to the corner on a lot of our major projects and onto the maintenance scheme to where, you know, we predict a good, steady, healthy revenue stream. to help with those pending legislative changes. So with that, I'm Andrew VanGale. We're here to present the budget for 26-27, and the Board of Authority approved this in June, so we're here today to recommend approval and inclusion into your budget as an enterprise fund. So for a few numbers, I'll make a brief today. We've done a few things this year. We conducted a facility condition assessment with Withers-Rabinol to kind of assess all our facilities and kind of assess our capital needs and maintenance needs for the future. And we're really pleased to say that the outcome was really exceptional, very good, almost excellent of a lot of our facilities, meaning we can kind of start budgeting and maintaining and keeping up the high level of service you know our condition of our facilities we have for the future to be competitive in the industrial market because it is very competitive out there third year of our rental rate increase out of a five-year plan we're almost there we've substantially increased our rental rates and our numbers show that within the next couple years from when we started this should be additional one million dollars a year in the revenue so We're really almost there. We're probably 70% there, so doing good on that. Our redevelopment site, we've completed two major construction projects. These new buildings, they're fully leased, occupied, and the third one now is in permitting here and almost ready to go. That'll be really a nice addition to the fort. Should be about $350,000 a year extra on that. So onto that, our occupancy is still strong, just about 90% all year long, so we're holding steady there. And so what this budget does today, you've all got a chance to look at it. The total budget is $6,835,529. Operational revenue is increasing to $3,009,213. Our expenditures have gone down to $4,268,030. And part of that expenditure, we have a $2.7 million capital budget. That's to complete one last building and some other you know, paving and infrastructure needs. And that surplus fund contribution, we stayed steady this year. October will bring you $250,000. This budget contemplates another $250,000 with, you know, assessment at the end of the year to see what's left for additional and how we, you know, finish off this next year. And, you know, keeping in mind that you know it's going to be important to start upping that contribution we understand that just for a little historical perspective from 2001 to 27 about 13 million dollars in contributions that's 500 brand a year as you average it out so i think uh we hopefully can see that number continuing to grow and stay about the static there and with that we're here to ask for adoption of our budget and for any questions you may have board members

I have no questions. Madam Chair, I believe you sit on that committee. I do. I'd like to get a briefing from you publicly, if you wouldn't mind.

I wouldn't mind. I was going to do that at the end, if no one else has any other comments. I would tell you that the work that's been done over the past five or six years has been significant in terms of doing an appraisal of all the facilities out there and making sure that we were getting the best return on the asset for our citizens. That is not an easy task when you've had a long time renters that have become accustomed to very small rate increases and so Andrew wisely brought in a step plan and the board did approve it and we did our our occupancy rate was a hundred percent for for a while and we're now at ninety percent but the step plan has continued to raise revenue despite the loss in occupancy rate I personally think a hundred percent occupancy rate is an indication of an issue and we've addressed the issue The two buildings are up and rented, and we've been telling you for a long time, we're coming, they're coming, they're coming, they're coming. They're now here. And the third one is in the works. I would also tell you that we have done, and you didn't bring this up, and I commend you for that, but I'm going to. We have done an amazing amount of work at the marina. And so the things that were happening out there that were not acceptable have been resolved. We have a new owner that took a level of patience and persistence led by our chairman that was pretty significant, and it took a heck of a lot of legal fees. A heck of a lot of legal fees. So if you're looking at any line items, that's the one you should be asking about. But we've come through the other end of that with a really good outcome. I will say that we... And the attorney that we have representing us has done an amazing job with that. I think we'd all say that. With the right mix of legal advice and every now and then a little bit of business advice that got us in the right direction. So we, I think, are in the best place that we've been in years with a long-term view of how do we get this thing to be as performing of an asset as it can possibly be into the long term. And that was the idea behind the Withers-Ravenal maintenance schedule. They did a complete analysis. Because quite frankly, it was all done before with. When somebody moved out, we knew we had a problem. Or Andrew assessing the place, Andrew and Jennifer figuring it out as they went along. We need a succession plan where we can see what's out there. There's a lot of assets out there. There's a lot of impact out there. With the changing of Orange Boulevard, which I promise is going to happen sometime, someway, someday, probably maybe before I'm gone, that asset's pretty significant. So now's the time to get it set. How's that, Commissioner Dilary?

Perfect. Do you recommend we adopt the budget?

I do recommend you adopt the budget.

Madam Chairman, I'd like to make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2026-27. Port Authority budget as presented here today with your comments. Second.

We have a first and a second. Any further discussion?

I would only say that I think that in the last couple of years, it in fact has turned a corner to a very professional operation and having the one major tenant turnover I think is not only a huge asset for the taxpayers, but also with the known issues we had with crime at the restaurant area over there will now be put to rest. And I thank the sheriff's office for assisting with that as well. So good work all the way around. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. There were a few tow truck drivers in that as well. Yeah, right. That were super important. All right. Did we vote? No, we didn't.

No, Chairman, before you call for the vote, can I just say one thing? Absolutely. Matthew Criswell, Chairman of the Summit County Port Authority, 13 years. I've seen a lot change out there. I was a contractor out there before that. I just want to say thank you to Andrew for leading the charge there. We've had some hiccups out there with the restaurant and the marina, but we've got new owners in that have brought just this massive influx of not only capital, but just a newfound resilience in it. They're ready to hit the road running. The new buildings that are going up are going to be a facelift for it. We've got new roadways, new stormwater drainage out there. The place in the last decade has turned around 180 degrees. It looks fantastic. I also want to say thank you to the chairwoman for sitting on our board. She brings a wealth of knowledge, not only business-wise, but also county and politic-wise. So we appreciate that. And I think we've got another decade or two that are just going to lead the charge out there. So stick with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

So I can't even keep the straight face. We all know I don't have much insight into politics. But thank you for that compliment. And I will thank the chair. You've done a great job. We have a really good, strong board with a little bit more diversification now with some of the new appointees. So we're in a good spot. So with that, no further discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously.

Thank you both for all your work. Good to see you all.

Call us only if you need us. You know, when I started, you were the only one on this board on Denari 2006. All right, easy.

Don't blow it now, Andrew. Don't blow it now. Never get out of here.

Bye, guys. See you all. Next time, bring the check next time. Talk over.

All right, I think we have an opportunity for public comment, but there is none. There was none, correct. Okay, just want to get that on the record. All right, county manager's report and staff presentations.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. We committed to this board about a year ago to follow up once our code enforcement team had been put in place on October 1, 2025, to give you an update. So it's my pleasure to share with you this update. Mr. Mbroads is going to kick it off, and then our division manager, John Martin, will step in. Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Again, Mike Rhodes, Development Services Director. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about where we've been and where we're going with code enforcement. As Tricia said, it was almost a year and a half ago that this board decided to bring code enforcement back underneath the Board of County Commissioners. and make some fundamental changes to how we do our work. So today I want to provide you with this update on our implementation process, what we've been able to accomplish over the last year, and then opportunities for continuing improvement. Again, as we know, that's what you are looking for. We'll go over a background here, current status and some case highlights, year two goals and opportunities, particularly some in light of possibilities for Amendment 3, although we won't go too deep into that, and then recommendations and next steps as we move into our second year. First, just to kind of take you back a little trip through time, we did a lot of work modernizing your code. We went through Chapter 53, Chapter 95, adopted a new International Property Maintenance Code. We amended Chapter 120. We amended Chapter 168. And we got all of those code amendments done with terrific support and help from Kate and the county attorney's office, in particular, Jen Nix. Thank you, Jen. There's a lot of work involved. And we still have more to do. But I just want to tell you, they've been terrific partners in making a lot of these changes and making this process work for us even better. In addition to that, we had to build the infrastructure. And so we got John on board. And John developed standard operating procedures and job descriptions. And he started recruitment. And we're going to introduce you to those folks here in a second. We also had to do a lot of case review, look at the old cases that were coming back from the sheriff's office and coming from the building department to see what we were inheriting in that regard. We still have this ahead of us. We've got some work to do with case migration into our new platform coming online with Accela in October. We've got the infrastructure built. John went ahead and got the folks hired and we commenced operations on October 1st with officers out into the field. As you know, the team is led by John, and I want to tell you John's been a terrific leader really since pre-day one. And it's not just me that says so. I can tell you at the same time he started with us as our division manager of code enforcement. He was also elected to be the president of the Florida Association of Code Enforcement, so he is regarded by his peers as an expert. Fortunately for us, he's finished his term as the president. So he's going to have a little bit more bandwidth since that's finished up. But John, together with his team here, have over 160 years of experience in code enforcement and law enforcement. And that's pretty unusual for a startup organization of any kind to bring that kind of experience on board. So with that, I want to go ahead and turn it over to John and ask him to come on up and walk you through some of the details of what we've been able to accomplish over the last year.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Hi, John. I want to assure each one of you that I took care of all the sobbing during the morning session because that broke my heart. I'd like to back up one slide, if we could, and introduce you to your team. Instead of using the photograph, we're just going to go down the line. Right here on the very end is Stephen Zanowick. Stephen came to us with 30 years of law enforcement experience from the U.S. Marshal's office. Next door to him is Ms. Katina Hill. She has over 10 years in code enforcement experience in Orange County. Right next to her is Christian Castaneda. He's your multifamily commercial inspector, and Christian brings to the table 30 years of housing experience in code enforcement. And you have Ms. Julie Ebert, my blessing from building. who was intricate part in helping us with the building case migration. To her left is the amazing, talented Alexis Vail, our clerk of the magistrate who's done a phenomenal job helping me get acclimated to the way the county does things and help me get the magistrate streamlined. Right next to her is Mr. Christopher Smith. He has 25 years in code enforcement and Air Force experience. He was a military police officer, and now he leads this team as my right hand. Mr. Morwell Jackson, the tall, handsome fellow there, is my nuisance abatement and pool officer. Jay comes to us with over 25 years of experience, and Ms. Seanette Williams, who helps with our admin processes and some 20 years of experience. Also, I need to poke fun at Mr. Rhodes behind me, who we didn't add to this, but he is an intricate part of the team with his 31 years of experience. So we'll move on to the next slide. And this next slide is pretty exciting because when I got here and I started digging around and poking for stuff, I was like, what is that? And I found a little block on the bottom of the county web page that said Seminole 311. So I opened it up and started playing with it. And I found out... Citizens could call in complaints from their phones on here, and I said, we need to use this. So we started using it. And then I started using it for its reporting purposes to figure out where do they need to be. And if you look at the dots on the screen, the dots represent completed inspections that have occurred since we started. And you can see that there was actually a pendulum swift. I originally thought we're going to put it into four zones, and we're going to put officers in each zone and have one guy handle the abatements, and now what we ended up with is we have an east side inspector, a west side inspector, a lot cleaning, or I call her my hot spot inspector. She does just lawns and junk. Cars, junk, lawns throughout the county. Then I said, well, I got to have my nuisance payment guy, I got to have a multifamily guy, which we'll go into why that happened here shortly in a few slides. And then we needed somebody on the west side. And somebody was familiar with the west side, and that's Shannon Henson, who's unfortunately not here with us, but I think she's on her second honeymoon or something. I don't know. Shannon's amazing, and Shannon brings 20 years of experience to the team. So if we could go on to the next slide. Okay. You'll see on the next slide here that this is how we originally configured the zones, and you'll notice that our CEZ zones, Code Enforcement Zone, does not mimic a commission district, and that was deliberate because I wanted to make sure that each zone had vast experience. One officer may be very strong in housing, one officer might have been very strong in commercial, one officer may have known this better, one didn't know that as well, so they were close to each other yet able to serve each other. This was how we did it in the beginning and now we've changed it a little bit and it's divided into east and west with the three specialty officers. We can go on to the next slide. I'm very excited. This is one of my happy slides. I even laminated this one. I love it so much. To date, your nuisance abatement officer has had 33 homeowners demolish their abandoned, nuisance, dangerous, vacant structures on their own dime. That's amazing. Yes, it is. That's amazing. Roughly, if you looked at what the abatement costs are, it's about $11,000 per abatement. So it comes out to about $363,000 worth of costs that we didn't have to look at taxpayers for. So we're very proud of that. Sixty-two multifamily properties were inspected by Officer Castaneda, and I helped out as much as I could, but not nearly enough, I'm sure. To date, he has 16 open cases on apartment communities. The remainder of those are in compliance. 133 junk cars were removed by owners at their dime, not ours. 178 lawns were either cleaned up and or mowed by property owners, and not a cent of taxpayer money was spent to do that. So a total of 884. I think it's closer to 950 as of today. Snipe signs have been removed, and I know what you're going to say. There's 950 more out there waiting. And there are, and I have a philosophy on how I'm going to handle that with my citation program, so we're going to the next step soon. As of two nights ago, we've now made 13 community meetings. We have had our lot cleaning contractor clean three lots, and we have been paid back by a citizen for one. We just put another lady on a payment plan for the second one. In addition, we've collected $187,000 in funds and other revenues thus far. So that slide is something that we're very proud of. For the time frame that we started to where we are today, this is a great kicking-off point. If we could go to the next slide. The next slide is very important because it shows responsiveness to community concerns. And if you look at the very dark green big piece, that represents the amount of complaints that came in from citizens, either through the app, through the... or through direct phone line to either Julie or the 311-0000 number, those are where those complaints are derived from. On the other side, the pale green represents officer-initiated cases. And please understand, officer-initiated cases aren't these guys driving around going, I need to cite something, I need to cite something. If you call in a complaint and you say at Mike's house, he's got high grass and weeds, and on the way to Mike's house there's three lawns that are as high as Mike's, They're required to address those three lawns We're not going to target Mike because Mike was the only person that got complained on we have to be equitable in our enforcement And that's what the team does we don't unless we are invited and on several of those we were invited by communities Please come sweep our community. It's bad And we've done that but the majority of the time when you see self-initiated think this is an equitable response to a citizen complaint We're not headhunters. We're not out there looking for people to pick on and I definitely want to put that thought process to rest. This slide is one that's also laminated. It's on the back page of the first one I laminated, but this proves you're right. Why do I say that? Because if you look at this slide, 1,626 cases were originated. 967 of those came into compliance prior to the need to send a notice of hearing. The next number is 659 were notices of hearing sent to people who were like, I don't think you're serious. I'm going to show you how serious we are. Here comes your certified mail, right? Of that 659, 65 cases had to be presented to a magistrate. That means only 4% of the cases required that were cited actually had to be presented to a magistrate. What that means in dollars and cents is that we were able to, through what you asked for, communication and follow-up, deliver voluntary compliance. And that's what you said was lacking. I remember those words the first time I met you. We believe that with the proper communication and follow-up, our citizens will do the right thing if they're educated and communicated with. You were right. Give yourselves a round of applause. The next slide is a fun slide. It says case highlights. It doesn't really have a lot on it. But then we're going to flip to this one. You may remember this case. A young lady who was pregnant went to look at an apartment. And as she went up the staircase, she actually got to ride it to the ground. Chris and myself responded to this as a request of the fire department. When we got out there, we immediately taped this off and we went in different directions. When we went in different directions, we saw very similar conditions. We then embarked on a complete building by building inspection, which resulted in us requiring that complex to replace 88 staircases. because there wasn't one on the property that was safe. Next slide, please. Of those 88 staircases today, every one of them are replaced with passing final building permit inspections, and they are painted. That property right now had a lot of fire violations that we were able to get into compliance, as well as this life safety issue that we were able to put into compliance, ensuring that we don't have another incident like that again. On the next slide, This lovely, beautiful property was a scene of several calls for service from the sheriff's office. It's off of St. John's. And there was a really beautiful picture on the other side that I chose not to put in this slideshow. But the house was unsecured. There's actually no floor system inside of it whatsoever. It's when you walk in, it's straight dirt. The house, the property was for sale. The gentleman was trying to get it rezoned and sold, and he wasn't having a whole lot of luck, and I pretty much told him, you've got two choices. You demo it or I will because I cannot have a vacant, unsecure structure sitting here where drugs and other, you know, I can't risk a citizen getting drug in there. I can't risk more calls for service to our sheriff's department. They have enough to do. He saw the light, and the next slide shows what happened. As of today, that mess is gone. He has passed his final inspection as he demoed the property under a permit. And again, that was done on his dime, not ours. So the next slide is fun. Got a complaint off of Lake Mobile where a gentleman was using a vacant parcel not owned by himself to scrap to make ends meet and he had a nice little setup going there. He would drag out his trailer and he'd pick up your metals from your garbage and he'd bring them back here and strip them clean, et cetera, et cetera. The next slide shows you an example of working with someone to help someone get their needs met through other measures and get this property cleaned up. I'd like to draw your attention to the next slide, if I may. This property was as a result of a Sheriff's Office search warrant on North US Highway 1792. There were drugs and human trafficking going on here, and when we responded to the property, we found multiple RVs, containers, trailers, et cetera, with people living in them. Junk cars were plenty. And we cited the property for a lot of different violations. We worked with the property owner very closely in a very short period of time. The next slide shows the result of education follow through and communication. So looking ahead at year two, goals and opportunities, we want to strengthen the existing programs. And part of that is that you currently have vacation rentals and a foreclosure program that we want to look at efficiencies for. And we have some ideas that we would like to bring back before you at a later time. The foreclosure registration program and the vacation rentals along with that would be the parking ordinance. There are a couple of little pieces of the parking ordinance that if changed, we would be able to address some of the parking issues that we have within unincorporated Seminole County. And the Sheriff's Department has already said, please do that, John. But it's a tool in our toolbox. It's not a revenue source by any stretch of the imagination. But if I run your car, if I tag your car and you move it into the street, I need to be able to deal with that. And the Sheriff's Office is far too busy to be bothered with that. Also, by the end of this month, your team will have our state accreditation package submitted. And by the end of this year, I would assume probably December 1st, week of December, we should be your very first state accredited code enforcement agency. At that, I'm going to turn the rest of it over to Mr. Rhodes. He's going to evaluate new processes and then talk about our last page. Any questions for me? If you think of any, you can bring me up. I'm just sitting there. Thank you.

Thank you. So, commissioners, you got a little taste of what we've been able to accomplish. There's a lot more to do. John talked about some of the efficiencies that we'd like to look at, improvements that we'd like to make to the registration programs. We also want to talk with you and begin to talk with the county attorney's office about foreclosures and foreclosure initiatives. Again, the state statute provides that after three months of running fines, the county or municipality that has the fines is able to foreclose. And while foreclosure is probably not, it's not the first thing that we're looking for to try to do, it's again, as John said, a tool in the toolbox. It's really the last resort. in most instances. We cannot foreclose on homestead properties, but there are those cases where we need to be able to foreclose in order to recover the taxpayers investments, your investments in this program and in many ways to kind of get the properties turned over so that they're better performing. We want to talk with you more about that over the coming year. I realize that's a little bit taller mountain to climb, but I think it's important to be able to do that because it's how you really put teeth in the program. It's not something that we would do, again, haphazardly, but we want to try to find an efficient way of doing that. Finally, we are going to be focusing on, again, learning lessons. And we're learning lessons every single day about how to do a better job for you all. And we're looking forward to feedback this afternoon, if you have any for us. We do want to improve the existing registration programs. They're not performing as well as they should be, could be. We are not getting the kind of information that we need to be getting in order to make sure that these programs expectations that you have for how they operate, provide us with the information that we need. We want to look at some additional tools for chronic and repeat violations. You saw an example last week of what you can do with the irreparable or irreversible kind of a violation. There's also the opportunity in the statute, and we included it when we did our revisions to the code, to also impose fines for repeat violations. And we haven't come across a case like that yet, but it's coming, I think. We also want to be able to just kind of take the opportunity again to get some feedback from you all as to what we're doing well, what you'd like to see us improve on. We are looking forward to moving on to the Accella platform, so you're going to have something that's more broadly available to you all, to your staff, as well as provide you with the statistical information that you're looking for, the dashboards that you're looking for. And we hope to have all that stuff deployed again later in October, and we'll have meaningful data that we'll be able to begin to show you just on a live basis going forward here in the next year. So with that, I'll end my part and shut up and listen.

Commissioner, any comments? Commissioner Zubel.

I just want to say thank you to all of you. My district has had a lot of problems, and we've heard from residents in my district about how well it looks now compared to what it did a year ago. There's still work to be done, as many of you are aware. But citizen input has been very good in telling us that they're starting to see things much better than they were several years ago. So thank you all for all your hard work. Leadership, thank you for leading us in the right direction, bringing those policies and procedures in place. to get this off the ground and working. So thank you very much.

I actually do have a question or two.

Go ahead.

With regard to the incident that happened with the stairs at the apartment complex, are we doing anything to proactively check these facilities? We now have more and more of them, as we hear every day.

So, and John can speak to the specifics of it, but he did mention in his presentation that He and his team looked at 62 apartment complexes across the county, and there are still more to look at. But I can tell you these folks are taking a proactive look at those properties in particular because they have not been looked at proactively, and they certainly need to be.

So proactively, one time doesn't count as proactively for me. So we're getting ahead of our past behaviors, and so now take me to proactively.

Absolutely. Pursuant to statute, multifamily structures higher than two stories are required to be inspected annually. Prior to our inception, that was somebody else's responsibility, and as of now, it's ours. Okay. So you have the confidence of knowing that this code enforcement team will be on every multifamily property annually at the minimum.

It's higher than two stories.

Yes, ma'am.

For everyone. Yes. I'm good with either, but.

It's anything higher than two stories. We're just now getting into the condos. We finished all the apartments. We're working in the condos right now. As you well know, that's going to take a little longer because you have so many more owners involved and so many more chefs stirring the pot. But they're still very good about getting compliance. So our plan is as we complete the year to start over. and revisit these on a... That's why I assigned Christian as the multifamily commercial inspector. So that's all his job is. We don't want to recreate the sins of the past ever again.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

And then just perspective on foreclosures. I know you said that was a tall path to go down. And I would tell you that it's not homestead property. It is not a stretch for me at all. Because one of the things that I have... in my district that's fairly regular is that these are just properties that somebody's sitting on from out of state. And they ruin the rest of the neighborhood. And we struggle with that. So I think it actually helps the homeowners that are living in their homes to take care of the neighborhoods if we have to go that far. And I doubt we ever will. As we've proved on your pie chart, on your funnel, we probably will never have to go that far. But having the ability to go that far is important in some instances.

Well, it is important to note that we do have several from the past that we want to talk to the board about in detail at a later time. But I believe, as the board believes, we have to be good stewards. So anytime the county expends money, we have to look at an option to get that back. And we've done well. I think Alexis and Julie have done very well in sending notices to people that have liens. Hey, you know, you still have a lien. Come talk to us. But we need more tools.

Any other comments? Yes. I'm sorry about that. It's all right.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't want to get into a list, but there are a number of things that should be looked at on an annual basis, both structural and other disciplines as well. I just want to make sure you are theory right. systematically going through that overall list that should be looked at from a safety standpoint.

I have a list, and I'd love to go over yours with you so that we can make sure we're both on the same page.

I'm not the local expert. Whatever you think is appropriate from a legal standpoint, that's what's important. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Then the other comment I have is under your goals and opportunities. I like the idea that you're looking at vacation rentals. Please involve tourism. I think tourism is just as important on that one aspect, because the two groups should work well together.

And just to add to that, along the same lines, the Apartment Association is out there. We want to engage with them. They've been important partners in the past, at least in my working. So it's a great education opportunity. They turn over a lot of their management staff. And so the work that we do with those constituencies, I'll just say, is also important. And John and his team are out there proactively engaging them as well.

Because it's not just stairs. There's other things to look at as well. Absolutely. Oh, yeah.

Yes, Commissioner Lockhart. Just refresh my memory. How much of the inspection requirement only became relevant with our adoption of the property maintenance code? So my question is, we're saying we didn't do all of these things that were required to be done, but how many of those only became effective with our implementation of the property maintenance code?

So we had a minimum housing code But it was not being enforced by anybody. And part of it was because it was 30 years old. Part of it was because the staff that we did have engaged on the sheriff's side were really only looking at single-family residential and primarily complaint-based cases. So... I won't say that we adopted new obligations, I suppose, so much as we updated the code standards that we had to make sure that we could look at all of the property in the county rather than what we had been doing just as a matter of practice, which was kind of these siloed approaches. And so a lot of what John and his team have done have... Again, gotten us out of the silo, I'll say collectively, so that we're working more proactively with the fire department, with the sheriff's department. But I hesitate to say it's new. It's simply we're doing it the way we should be doing it. Is that it?

So I guess I'll probably need clarification then because there were multiple times that there were situations in my district where folks would be called out to look at things that were structural or property maintenance related. And the response repeatedly was, that's not a part of our code. We don't enforce that. I'm not saying that to you specifically in this case. current setting. But historically, the response that I was given as a commissioner was, well, that's not a part of our code. It's not something the county enforces. It's not something that the code enforcement at the sheriff's office handles. And so we just would go, okay, I guess that's not something we do. So I guess what I'm struggling with is how either I was given misinformation back then, or I was told that it was the implementation of the new property maintenance code that is now allowing you to do some of these things.

Back then, you had the building code was the only code you had to fall back on when there was something that was alleged to be structural in nature. So it was very limited as to who could respond and look at what. The requirement for the multifamily has always been in place. With the International Property Maintenance Code, what you did was allow your team to be able to handle everything from the shed, the fence, the condo, the industrial park, the stormwater drain and the fallen tree. That's what you enabled us to do by giving us that. You took everything from that basket and that basket and that one over there and you put it all in one place. And now that we've done that, we have the efficient means to address those issues and then lay down a timeline to stay preventative moving forward. Does that make sense? Does that help a little?

It does. It does. I think... It's a testimony to not having things... Is trifurcated a word?

Or quadrificated. Yeah, quadrificated.

Yeah. Yes, it does. For another time.

But to your point, one of the things that we talked about when we adopted these new standards and adopted the International Property Maintenance Code and created this division was to eliminate... You know, the finger pointing and who's supposed to be doing what and make it all and make it easy. Got it. So the tools are there now. I'll say that. And we want to keep working on them, but the tools are there. The responsibility is there. The team is in place.

We eliminated the disconnects.

Yep. commissioners and our to that point yes I think my experience pre going down this route was well that's a building officials problem to deal with we don't deal with that or that's development services or that's a permitting problem and under this new It appears you brought all that together under one umbrella to be able to deal with that. Some of them were fire marshal issues that you had to communicate to somebody else in another department. That department doesn't know what that's going on. I think now there's communication amongst the departments and understanding you all have the tools to go do what is necessary. use those other assets to your ability to bring them into compliance. So with that said, and I think, John, you and I have had this discussion a couple times because we've got a couple in my district, of course. These home-based businesses, which are allowable to a certain extent. This is probably a legal attorney question. I wonder, because in my district I have auto repair facilities operating out of people's homes. I have boat repair facilities operating out of people's homes. What are we doing to make sure that the waste oil, the cleaning chemicals, the welding equipment, and all the things that are being utilized in that are not presenting a public safety issue or an environmental hazard.

I'm glad you asked.

Just like is being done on the commercial side that we have to adhere to.

Right. I'm glad you asked. Last week's training and the team, probably any one of them could come up here and do this for me right now, but under Florida Statute 559955, the home-based business rule statute that was enacted a few years back, allows you to operate a business on your property provided that the business is being, the work is being done on your property is number one. Number two, that the employees either reside, most of the employees reside there. Two can come from somewhere else and work there. Number three, the property parking must be that consistent with the rest of the community. So if everybody's got no semis and you have four semis, we have a not congruent with the rest of the community problem. The other issue is then is if that business manufactures something, they can't sell it out of the shed. They have to sell it out of the principal structure. So it kind of really locks them into this little area where they're very limited on what they can do. Service-related industry in a home-based business actually does not fit 559955. It does not. For me to build you a race car in my front yard and sell it to you, it would not be allowable under 559955. For me to make you a pen and sell it to you at my front door is perfectly allowable. For me to make you cottage food, industry jams, cakes, pies, and sell them to you is perfectly legal. A lot of the things that have been going on in that area out there being that it's rural and it's so far out and people just... thought they could, they can't. And we're doing a lot of re-educating with people, and we're getting much cooperation. I have to tell you that they're probably the easiest people in the world to work with. And a lot of them, based on some of the things that they've been doing and the length of time they've been doing it, as long as certain caveats are being put into place, like show me a contract with a waste oil disposal company. Show me a contract with a battery disposal company. along those lines. And then when anyone was to drive past that property, provided it looks like every other property in the community, We're not going to come down on you. You start junking up my neighborhood and spilling your oil in the street, then I have to take exception to that. We have to have that other conversation. So it's a big re-education push because of the misconception of 559.

Yeah, and I often worry about, only because I'm in and have been in those type businesses, that life safety. Absolutely. When you have... four, five, six, seven, eight vehicles or more in a confined area, and you have, unfortunately, a fire that sets out. Is our fire marshal aware of that? Is our fire department aware that that's what they're responding to? More of a commercial setting than a residential setting, number one. Number two, the amount of focus we put on water quality and all those things, where is the waste oil going? Where are the chemicals going? Absolutely. And that's always a concern that I have of what's going on in some of those instances.

We took your concern that you and I talked about very early on, and we looked at those properties out there with people doing things similar to those, and we looked at how do we protect the environment. What are your disposal methods? What are you actually doing? Can you do this? Is there a way to help you to be able to do this to supplement your income, or is this your primary focus? Well, the big caveat with 559 is you have to actually live on the property. You can't just... get a piece of rural boundary property and run a business out of it. That's a no. So one of the things that we've been doing is looking through each of these businesses on these areas, and this is county-wide. The first thing we do is we make sure there is a business that there's a BTR. And can there be a BTR? If they can, then we make sure they get it. And that's one of the ways that fire would know that there's something other than a residence going on here when they get there. Part of the other additional things that we're going to talk to you about in year two would be the RV branch because some of these properties have 11 RVs on them. You and I both know if I park an RV between your house and mine and my RV bursts into flames, you're losing just as much as I am. Right. So one of the things that we'll want to talk to you later on next year about is doing something to improve those problems. Sure. With people living in RVs, you then have to deal with sewage disposal. So we have, as you all know, we have our hands quite full.

Right.

And we're trying to prioritize what needs to be addressed and then that's again That's why this November issue is so critical to all of us because as you can see Most of the 3,600 inspections in the cases that were conducted to bring them into compliance Are most likely a reduction in calls for service to the sheriff's office fire department EMS environmental water quality right But please, every one of you all know how to get a hold of me. All you have to do is message me, and I'll stop what I'm doing and run to see you. I'll be happy to talk to you one-on-one and answer any questions.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't tell us you're doing that. Don't, no.

You all know that. And one final question. Yes, sir. Are we on our way to getting body cams for our code enforcement officers?

As you might imagine, Commissioner, we're having to look at budget cuts at this time. And, well, I don't know about that. You keep bringing it up, too. It's something that we realize is a benefit to us across the board. There's also a cost, a cost to maintaining all the data. We have worked with IT to look at that right now, and we're still evaluating it at the moment, and I'm sure we'll be in a better position to make a better educated decision November 4th.

Fair enough.

See how good he does that?

Assistant County Manager, I think wanted to say something. I'm sorry.

I just wanted to say it's serendipitous that I got to sit here for Darren today because probably in my 12 years at the county, the establishment of this division is what I'm most proud of. And we all have a lot to be proud of when you look at the work they've done. And I really wanted to thank this commission. It wouldn't have happened had you not made the decision to bring code enforcement in-house. So thank you And thank you for your support of this team. It's a great example of when you put the right people in the seats of the bus or whatever that cliche is, what can happen. And also to Mike and John and Jen Nix, who were in the trenches last summer.

It was nice to not see them for a little while after the other Holy Coat updates, but we're all very proud. Thank you.

Well, this can't go unsaid either, and that is that we had what we all felt like was a mess boiling under the... surface of the water and Tricia just had heard enough and said, give it to me. I'll take it. And then walked down the hall like that. And then took it and did it. And so we appreciate you. We know this is not the only thing that that's ever happened with, but this certainly has had a significant impact on the community. So we're in debt to you as well.

Absolutely.

Yes, Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you. And as all have said, not only is the compliance so much better, but the response back to the office is so much better. I mean, instead of going into a black hole and not knowing what's happening, you're getting back to our offices so that we can get back to the citizens. And I really appreciate it. I do have a sensitive question. And if you'd rather answer it offline, I'd be happy to do it. But in my district, since I don't know how many years, but it's been at least 20, I have a habitual offender who has amassed liens and fines of over 20 times the value of his property. and I'm going to make it nonspecific, to habitual violators that you're never going to be able to get the money back, is there any other thing that we can do?

My response would be we can ask the legislature to change the state statute so that we can have the same kind of authority to foreclose under certain circumstances on homestead properties. And that's certainly the... the predicament that we're in right now. And I don't see that happening based upon my experience dealing with the legislature. But I do know that from time to time, even with those properties, windows open. And we always look for those windows to open. And so when they do and we can take more action, we will.

Well, and I would say, Commissioner Constantine, this may be an opportunity for you to work with FACC to put it on the top of one of their priorities for the legislative session.

The poor citizens, and that's a good suggestion, but the poor citizens that live around there. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible. What they have to put up with, and the value of their property is diminished immensely.

And in some instances to zero because you cannot sell it.

Right. Exactly. And I can promise you every community has someone like that. And I think with the right kind of guardrails built in, the legislature can give us the authority to deal with that. But it's going to take a lot of work across the state of Florida.

All right. If it's any consolation, there are developments, and I am on top of it. And I will stay with my teeth to his leg.

I was going to ask you to pull the microphone over, but don't. He just said he was going to stay on top of it. All right, any other comments, Commissioners? With that, thank you all for the presentation, and thank you all for the hard work that you've given all year long. And it's okay to smile.

Thank you all.

All right, that takes us to District Commissioner Reports, District 2. Commissioners in the hour.

I don't have a whole lot to report. I just want to remind folks, you know, I always have animal issues in my district. We have an HOA that has an overabundance of Muscovy ducks that have invaded their HOA areas. We've forwarded it over to FWC and let FWC deal with it. But just a friendly reminder to the public, Muscovy ducks are a non-native Floridian bird But they still are protected from cruelty so we do not suggest you do anything to these animals contact FWC for guidance likewise Don't feed these ducks because feeding these ducks do nothing but draw more ducks. And then you will be overrun with Muscovy ducks. So just a public service announcement, don't feed the Muscovy ducks. Let them come and go, and they'll go to the next HOA, and they'll fly and walk 10 blocks away to the other HOA. But if you've got a couple folks who just like to feed the ducks, guess what? They're going to be there for a while. Outside of that... Everything else is doing well in District 2.

All right, I'm going to go backwards because I skipped the county attorney and the county manager. Did you feel left out?

I did, but I have no report.

I thought maybe we should get that on the record. I do have a couple of things, Darren. Awesome. So as of September 10th, we will celebrate the opening of the Nygren Carriage Collection at the Museum of Seminole County History. And we want to thank the Seminole County Historical Society for really championing that collection.

What date again?

September 10th.

Okay.

And that's been a long time coming. So definitely wanted to share that. Additionally, we want to highlight that Seminole County's Mark Sand Conservation Strategy has received a 2026 Aliceans, forgive me if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly, Woolbrook NATO Impact Award. Working with the East Central Florida Regional Resilience Collaborative and Stetson University, county data was analyzed using the Mark Sand Conservation Strategy to identify important natural areas and opportunities to reduce flooding, improve stormwater management, and support conservation. And just two other pieces of good news, our solid waste team earned a national award for the Solid Waste Association of North America for our recycling program. And our communications team received three awards at the recent Florida Public Relations Association Golden Image Awards for our Citizens Academy. So that's not only a congratulations to them, but our departments who participate in that.

Great. Good stuff.

Awesome, awesome. I didn't say go Hatters when you said that. I know. I was going to say. Go Hatters. Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much. On August 20th, the Seminole Chamber had a business awards for Seminole County at the Hilton in Altamont Springs. And one thing that was very heartwarming is how many of our businesses are so much involved in the community. and involved in philanthropic activities with this community. So congratulations to all. Also that day, the Tourist Development Council and the TID Advisory Board had a meeting, mostly about, obviously, the sports complex and information on that, but also the fact of how successful so many of our programs have been. whether it be through our advertising, social media, all the way through just the increases with the hotels. I can tell you that the hotels are also very, continue to be very supportive and excited about the sports complex. This morning at 9 a.m., Virtually, there was a statewide council of opioid abatement. I was there for the first 15 minutes. Could not be there for the rest of the time, obviously. Tomorrow, the Florida Trust is having one of their annual, semi-annual meetings. So I will be attending that. The Seminole Chamber, again, on August 27th, will be having a business resource at Seminole State College in Heathrow. And I think that's always helpful to many of our businesses and citizens. The next series on the data centers for NACO will be on the 28th. And this one will be on understanding electricity and the use of electricity for data centers. September 3rd at Good Morning Seminole, there is going to be an update from the zoo. To finish this off in a very exciting and happy comment, tomorrow one of our citizens who had lived in Robin Hill since 1969 will be 103 years old, Bob Lowe. He's one of the now continuing to dwindle, World War II veterans. He was a Navy Master Chief Petty Officer in World War II. And Mr. Epps and so many of his neighbors in Robin Hills will be giving him a party outside at 530. All are welcome to go if you can. And, you know, Mr. Lowe is a wonderful person and a happy birthday, sir. And thank you for your service and just living a good life.

That was tomorrow night?

Wednesday, yes, 5.30.

Wednesday, tomorrow night at 5.30. That's fabulous. Does that conclude your report?

That's mine. That's my report.

All right, Commissioner Lockhart.

While we're doing birthdays, I'll do a birthday shout-out to my dad. Today is his 92nd birthday. We got to celebrate together last weekend. Thank you very much. He's moving and grooving at 92. His great-great-grandmother lived to 105. Wow. So there's some good longevity genes there. I know. I know. Wanted to let you all know that both Lynx and SunRail board meetings have been canceled pretty much for the summer and this month. I think we reconvene in September. Maybe we have September meetings on the schedule. I'm sure Ms. Elory can give you some updates on what is happening from a staff perspective with those two agencies. That would probably be a good thing to go ahead and schedule. Not here now, but yeah. Poor thing. She was like, oh my gosh, I got to get up there. No, no, no. At another time, individual updates would probably be really helpful. Thank you to Chris Patton and his team and the folks at Scout who brought out a vehicle to the American Legion in Oviedo. And there were about, I'm going to say, 50 or 60 folks out there for their coffee time. And they had an opportunity to ask lots of questions and hear about how they can utilize Scout services. One of the things that was asked, and I said that I would bring it before the board for future consideration, I feel like everything has to have the caveat, depending on what happens in November. But for future consideration, having there be a direct connect to the Lake Nona VA facility. They really saw the potential opportunity for them to be able to access their medical care at the VA, which of course is not in Seminole County's boundaries. But perhaps there would be some creative way for us to think about that in the future. The medical examiner meeting a couple of weeks ago, last week, the item that was up on the agenda that we kind of had a question about, is this for informational purposes or voting purposes? It was not. It wasn't voted on, but they were asking whether or not there were any objections for it to come back to our individual boards. What it's basically doing is changing the language in the contract that's currently in place to reflect how we are actually operating. Several board meetings ago, we realized that we were not operating in accordance with the agreement. So we said, well, do we want to change the agreement to reflect the way we're actually operating, or do we want to change the way we're operating to reflect the agreement? And we said, let's amend the contract to reflect the actual process that's in place. So that without objection at the medical examiner board meeting, that change is going to come back to this board and all of the boards for consideration and ratification and then go back to the medical examiner board, I believe.

Great.

I see some very perplexed faces. I do. I do because... Presumes we like the way they're operating.

Because we went through, I think a year or two ago, all the county attorneys reviewed the contract and be sure was consistent with what our purpose was. So I don't know what's changed there.

Well, so what has changed is that the medical examiner never shared with anyone that she was not operating in the way that the contract is written. So all of the attorneys were in agreement about what the language said.

Maybe I'm mistaken. Is it the contract between her or between us as the parties?

us, because it has to do with transporting of bodies. Right. And they were actually doing transporting even though it wasn't in the contract to do it. I believe I have that right, or is it the other way around? Is that correct? I'm going to look into Christian. It wasn't until a few months ago, which precipitated the scoring that I gave, by the way, that we were able in our public meeting to come to the conclusion that what all of the counties agreed on was not actually what was being implemented by the medical examiner's office. Christian, do you mind? You can clarify. Yep.

Christian Swenson, Assistant County Manager. So when Seminole joined District 5, There was a different set of rules in the inter-local agreement for us to pay a private firm to transport bodies. So as opposed to tie up their vehicles, the medical examiner was supposed to contract with an outside agency to transport those folks to their facility. That's gone on a number of years. No one realized until a meeting a few months back that There was no call to that outside vendor to bring them in. Instead, they were utilizing the District 5 vans to pick up the deceased folks and bring them back. So it was a true-up to take out that caveat that we were supposed to do something different and make it the same as it was being done. Okay.

So the obvious question, is Marion County, as the point entity on overseeing the medical examiner's board. Their legal team is on that board. Their fire division oversees the running of that operation. Was somebody not following up and watching those as them being the point organization, if you will, who provides all the oversight and et cetera? They just now caught that? Or did we catch it to bring it to their attention?

I think it came to light as a result of my incessant annoying questioning at the board meeting. I hesitate to say that another county wasn't doing their job because I'm not sure how they would have known. It was such a random thing to stumble upon to find that the piece that really impacted Seminole County's inclusion had changed. I don't think they would have had any reason to know that the that that piece didn't ever occur. Is that a fair statement?

I understand what you're saying, but they are the administrative arm to that board.

Understood.

And they are also the administrative arm and part of the contractual agreement with the medical examiner, who is a separate entity. So under what I think I'm hearing is, No one entity is actually auditing what's happening. Each entity is going to have to audit themselves through the contracts, through the medical examiner's contract with the consortium to determine if everything's being done that's contracted to be done.

If I may, I'll... The invoicing was supposed to apparently come to us directly. So I think how the confusion was brought to light had to come from a budget session where Commissioner Lockhart was questioning the purchase of vehicles. This is a convoluted thing. We had to provide certain vehicles for them to do certain things with their death investigators. We were doing that. They were requesting vehicles for transport. So we were like, well, hold on. We already have vehicles. And this kind of discombobulation of which vehicle belongs to who is how it come to light. This issue, then we said, well, hold on. We're supposed to be paying for the transport. Then it was like, as we looked into it, she wasn't billing us. You know, quite frankly, the bills go to a party of none of us were there. So after we looked into this and said, we're not getting bills, Marion wouldn't know we're not getting bills. The medical examiner had kind of veered left and was doing it the same way everyone else was doing it. So that's how it was a bit muddled with, I don't know if there was a check and balance that they could have necessarily have seen directly. Right. And quite frankly, we were a degree removed from the actual bills coming in to be able to see it directly ourselves. Right.

I'm not sure that this is a bad thing for us.

No, I don't say that at all.

Okay.

I'm just trying to how it got between the cracks.

Completely understand. Commissioner DeLaurie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Lockhart, for bringing this to our attention. Obviously, when this comes before us, I'd like to definitely see the contract and actually get a briefing from our staff so we can all be up on the same page. You obviously have more knowledge than we do because you and Commissioner Zimba have been further involved, as well as I think Commissioner Herr, you've been to one meeting or so? No? Okay. She's like, don't put that on me. Lucky lady.

I know nothing about birthing these babies.

I thought you were, but I'm sorry. I stand corrected. But I'd like to be brought up to speed with our staff, and so I'd like to read the contract.

Absolutely. And that contract will make its way back through the county attorney's office, and then I'm sure they'll be setting up briefings with... And again, when I say staff, it'll be the attorney's office as well as Christian and whoever else has been involved in it. Absolutely.

And hopefully that's the only change in the contract.

think there'd be more questions because the only one i've seen i believe that the same type of thing happened with cremation services how they were handling so the two are it's very much the same it's a transport and a cremation it's one section of the interlocal agreement that's basically striking through everything that was making us different from every everyone else and why it was set up differently all those years ago i don't think any of us can speak to that i can speak to that

But do you have to? No.

No, I don't have to, but thank you.

Let's hold it for when this comes up. So that's what happened at the meeting and what will be to come from the medical examiner district. The other item that I wanted to put out for future thoughts and consideration when we start talking about bears again and bear management areas, there's been an uptick in bear activity in my district, which is interesting because it's more of the urban core of the county, but the area between I-4 and the 417 has seen quite an uptick in activity. I shouldn't say none of, very few of the residents in that area have any idea that there are bear management areas in other parts of the county or that there are tools that they can utilize to help limit the human-bear interactions or getting into the trash or those sorts of things, because all of our efforts have really been in those bear management areas, and yet we've got a lot of bears in the urban area. Yeah, the urban bear management area in the urban area. So I'd like to look at that when the next time we start having those conversations could come up. And that's the end of my report.

I would tell you that that is more than likely a result of the success of bear preservation. I mean, I see it firsthand. We're having a lot of babies every year. And they disband when they grow. So they're finding places to go.

Yeah, within two or three years, they leave mama.

And they're not going west. So some are probably going west. But I mean, we're having several multiple births a year. I mean, we all know them by name.

Well, they have good feed. And a pop of garbage isn't as good as ours.

And you shouldn't feed the ducks, and you shouldn't feed the deer, and you shouldn't feed the bears, and you shouldn't feed the turkeys. Or the sandhill cranes. What about the birds? No, no.

I agree.

All right, Commissioner. Only the chickens.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be brief. I know we spoke about this briefly at the beginning of the meeting, but I want to congratulate the UCF Business Incubator Program for being number one in the state. And I also want to congratulate our staff because they've actually been able to get them to go to Seminole State, their building as well. And I know a lot of work went into that. And so I want to thank UCF, Seminole State, and our staff for putting it all together. And it's quite an accomplishment to have such a good incubator program for our businesses. And I wanted to thank everyone involved. End of my report.

Thank you. All right, so the District 5 report Very brief. I attended a grand opening in the city of Sanford, but yesterday, for a manufacturing plant, and it's pronounced Airnon Formulating Solutions on Tech Drive in Sanford. Wonderful family-owned business, well-paying jobs, et cetera. But the best part of it was the story shared by Mrs. Airnon that they originally were moving out of Brooklyn to New Jersey.

That's not right. Don't go there. To New Jersey.

No, hold on for it.

Are they going to come back?

We'll both be vindicated here. And the permitting process in New Jersey took so long and was so difficult and was pretty horrible. that the property that they purchased in New Jersey appreciated while they were doing all of the work to try to get to build it. Of course they did. And they ended up in Florida, in Seminole County. So I thought that was a great story. That is a good story. So what we do matters. Permitting matters. Doing it well and efficiently matters. And then I'll switch to the chairman's report. I did get to welcome the Department of Children and Families executive leadership to the annex. We were doing a show and tell day on the opioid prevention program that we have here and folks were touring. It was a good opportunity, really well done by our team. There is, on 9-1, overlooked park improvement ribbon cutting that's happening. That's right. On 9-4.

I'll be flying in from Chicago that morning, early.

On 9-4, I have the opportunity to do a final mile ceremony at the Cape Canaveral Cemetery. which will take two deceased veterans to the cemetery for final internment, and there's no family on hand, so we'll be standing in. Yeah, awesome. Who else is going? Is anybody else going? Awesome. We do have a 9-11. On 9-11, we have Leadership Seminole Government Day that Tricia heads up so well. I believe we have an event that day as well to commemorate 9-11. And my final comment is that the canvassing board tomorrow will wrap up the final meeting. It will be the audit. Final results, as you all know, were transmitted. And we can put a period at the end of the sentence for the first election being successfully done by the new supervisor of elections office.

Great.

And even in the last session, there were more positive comments from the League of Women Voters who had somebody in the room every time during this cycle as well as the last cycle. And I will say I will be glad to be done with that. That concludes my chairman's report. Is there anything else for the good of the order? Hearing nothing, I will adjourn the meeting.